: Re: Are there copyright issues with a novella title if it's a famous line? If you use a line or phrase from a really famous poem that most can recite as a title for a novella, is it stealing?

@Deb2945533

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It's done often enough. I can think of books and stories with titles that come from poems, Bible quotes, etc. Like Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" is a quote from Ecclesiastes, and there's a fairly well-known science fiction story called "By the Waters of Babylon", also a Bible quote. There's a story by Heinlein called "And he Built a Crooked House", which is a line from the poem, "There Was a Crooked Man."

Note this is not about copyright but about trademarks, which is entirely different rules. Depending on the details, the writer of the original poem might have grounds for a trademark suit against you.

IANAL, but my guess is that if it's a poem that has long since gone out of copyright, you'd be pretty safe. But if you took a line from, say, music lyrics of a song that just came out last year, you'd probably be on thin ice.

My conclusion would be: Unless you have a really strong reason to want to do this, I'd avoid it just to avoid potential trouble. If it's not necessary, why take the chance on a lawsuit, even if you were pretty sure you would probably win?

I gladly yield to any trademark lawyers who can give a more definitive answer.

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