Today, I got a letter from a customer and was very surprised. The customer is the owner of the online shop, which sells tickets to various events all over the States. In our copies, we very often use the word “hard-to-get”, which is a very strong word and it gets even a stronger meaning in such combination as “hard-to-get tickets” in sentences like: “some company will be happy to provide you with hard-to-get tickets to any event you like”. Today, I got a letter from the customer, in which he asked me not to use the word “hard-to-get” for it is copyrighted by Razorgator.
For your information, Razorgator is also an online ticket vendor and if you google for “hard-to-get tickets” you will see Razorgator taking the first position. Great! How clever it is. Copyright the word so that no one could use it, and your site has all top positions in search engines! In fact, on Razorgator site, this word is featured in the following way Hard-To-Get sm
Now, if so, what should other people do if they want to use this word? Pay to Razorgator? Or link this word to Razorgator? This is damn good business then. Why not go and copyright a word “baseball” or “baseball tickets”? Then, anyone wanting to write anything about “baseball tickets” will address me and pay me money. Great!
In fact, the question under discussion is if anyone can copyright any word he/she likes? Secondly, what should other people do if they want to use this word? Very often, they may not even know that this word is copyrighted©. Is it lawful at all to put any usage limitations on neutral words having nothing to do with a trademark, or a brandname or a logo?
1 comment:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.html
the US copyright office claims you "...cannot register claims to exclusive rights in brief combinations of words..."
and provides a list.
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