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From: boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: re: Re-use of titles
Message-ID: <1448@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 07:55:32 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1448
Posted: Sat Mar  1 07:55:32 1986
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> From:	csd2!krantz	(Michael Krantz)

>> You can't copyright a title.

> This is true.
> In theory, anybody who
> wanted to publish a story or novel called "Gravity's Rainbow"
> would be welcome to (though a publisher or magazine editor
> would be unlikely to consider use of the title justified
> by the material.)  Like there probably won't be another
> novel titled "Moby Dick," but, for instance, there has
> been in the past,  and will be again, a book called (as
> Joyce Carol Oates' recent work was) "Solstice," since
> that work wasn't authoritative enough to pre-empt the
> title.

One of the most obviously examples of title re-use is Ralph Ellison's
THE INVISIBLE MAN. Probably the most bizarre is the case of two separate
novels with the same title coming out *from the same publisher* within a
few months of each other --- THE DEEP, one by Peter Benchley and the
other by John Crowley (the publisher of both was Doubleday).

Titles cannot be copyrighted (though they can be trademarked), but I
believe that re-using a *distinctive* title is strongly discouraged.
Common word titles (such as, to use your example, SOLSTICE) are quite
likely to be re-used, but distinctive titles, such as GRAVITY'S
RAINBOW are not.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)

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