Copyrights and names of websites

[FireYourJob]

You can look up phrases that are copyrighted here http://www.copyright.gov/records/

what does it mean when there are many instances of the same phrase?

If you started a blog with one of those phrases, I assume that would be an issue.

What if a phrase was say six words long and you made the last 3 words an acronym?

Any copyright attorneys out there with insights?

[deborah]

Copyright doesn't protect names of things.

That website is giving you the names of things that are copyrighted and registered with the copyright office. It's the underlying creative work that is copyrighted, not the name of it.

Trademark law, on the other hand, is concerned with the names of things. For trademarks, the court is generally concerned with whether somebody would be confused by your similarly named product. I am not going to give a summary of trademark law here but I wanted to point you in the right direction, which is not copyright law.

+1 Copyright is on your creative product - you copyright a book, or a painting (and it's virtually automatic - although copyright differs slightly in different countries) or something your creative juices have put together. Coca Cola is a trademark. If you design a new process (like a steam engine - something that can be repeated) you apply for a patent. trademarks and patents must be registered and cost money. Copyright doesn't.

[FireYourJob]

Ok thanks for the info. My same question applies to a trademark the.

I assume I couldn't make a website alled imlovinit.com

Maybe I could make one caled imlovinGit.com since it's spelled differently but not sure.

My example is actually around the title of a rap album that used a fairly common phrase I'd like to use for my blog name.

[FireYourJob]

In doing a TESS search, there's nothing registered with the exact phrase I'm using.  There seems to be some discussion around whether that's enough of a search or not, but so far, things look promising that this phrase is not trademarked and my site would later be shut down.

[FireYourJob]

Thanks Cathy.  I appreciate the perspective

[socaso]

I did some research on a similar topic, movie names and movie character names and all the information I founds indicates that titles and character names cannot be copyrighted. If you think about song titles there are quite a few song titles that have been used over and over for different songs in different styles. Content and long phrases can be copyrighted.