Re: Question for Playwrights About Play Title

Christopher Jahn wrote:
> And it came to pass that Ray P. Light wrote:
> > As a playwright, do you have ownership of the title of your
> > play?  I wrote a play that I registered with the US
> > Copyright office and that was published by Sam French. 
> > However, I read that another playwright (who is about to
> > have a production off-Broadway) is using the exact same
> > title for her play.  (There is absolultely no reason to
> > think she stole the title, but just that she happened upon
> > the same title.) Just curious.

> Titles are not covered under copyright law. Most of what you 
> might think of as protected titles are actually trademarks, such 
> as "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones...".

And _they_ are trademarks because of toys and paperback novels and comic 
books and games and....

I gather you can copyright a particular _design_ for the title (funky 
font, drawings integrated into the type, or, on the other hand, type 
arranged so as to constitute a drawing -- cf. the B'way "Funny Girl" art 
-- etc.)  But that's not the same thing.

--
John W. Kennedy
"You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction
together; but it is about as perceptive as classing the
works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W. W. Jacobs together
as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."
  -- C. S. Lewis.  "An Experiment in Criticism"