NO, BOOK TITLES AREN'T PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

If you thought book titles were protected under copyright law, you thought wrong. I wrote about this at length in my book on the limits of copyright law, From Russia, with Love.
   Then I did a follow-up piece in Harry Potter and the Shameless Cash-Grab Rip-Off Bogus Tie-In. 
   Available in shoe shops.

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Another day, another petty online squabble over shit that was obvious if the squabbler on the squeaky side of the street had bothered to check first.

   Book titles are not protected under copyright law, with an exception I'll shortly stagger to.

AUTHOR ONE: I've written Stacking Vaginas - One Archivist's Quest for Love in the Cutthroat World of Industrial-Strength Shelving.

AUTHOR TWO: (Remains silent. Has already written a bawdy comedy called Stacking Vaginas. This has nothing to do with archival research.)

AUTHOR ONE: (Discovers book with near-identical title.) Holy fuck-shit-balls on a stick with suggestive bells on. I AM FUCKING OUTRAGED AND WILL NOW SHIT-POST THE LIVING HELL OUT OF THIS GOLD-PLATED CLUSTERFUCK. And I'll blame the other author.

INTERNET: Calm thy fucking tits.

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Copyright law does not protect ideas - only the presentation of those ideas. I've decided to create a womanising drunk of a man who kicks around in the Royal Navy before embarking on a career as an operator in the glamorous world of spies and large rockets with symbolic meaning.

   Next? I'll keep him so secret that I only refer to him by number. He's 07. How am I doing so far? Andrei Gulyashki tried this just after Ian Fleming's death. 

Old Andrei there tried to cut a deal to make his Bond book official. This KGB-backed approach through a Bulgarian scribbler might have tickled Fleming's fancy as a collaborative project earlier in Bond's literary adventures...

   But Fleming was soured on dealing with people who wanted a piece of Bond, after being dragged through the courts over issues with Thunderball, so this Bond project would've been no-go in Fleming's later life.

   With Fleming's estate protecting the property, that Bond story wasn't going to happen over the author's dead body either. We've had the technicians at GCHQ run the title through every process imaginable, and...

   It seems highly likely that 07 stands for James Bond, 007. One copy on Amazon, a snip at four hundred quid. Used. No reviews.

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Back to the original topic. Book titles are not protected by copyright law. However, if a book contains a Trade Mark in the title then that part of the title is afforded a level of protection.

   So be aware of that hidden branch on the forest floor.

   Beyond that, though...

   There is protection against passing off. You can't get away with passing off your work as someone else's. If I write a book called From Russia, with Love, by Ian Flamming, then I am attempting to pass my work off as Ian Fleming's. And that's no-go.

   There are plenty of rip-offs having a go at Harry Potter, and Andrei's stab at the espionage story is a blatant rip-off...but Andrei isn't passing his story off as an Ian Fleming tale - even if 07 is the largest image on that book cover.

   Yes, the difference between rip-off and passing off is a sketchy one at times. Parody is another matter entirely.

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Don't infringe a large corporate entity's Trade Mark in your book title: that's a battle of the wallets you'll lose in court.

   Parody a work if you must.

   Rip it right off if that's the limit of your ability. We hope you expand on your ability to the extent that you stop ripping things off.

   Don't pass your work off as someone else's.

   With these things in mind, be aware that there's no copyright in titles. And you are very likely to find other books out there with your title on them. So, yes, run a title search online the moment you come up with a title, and save yourself the hassle.

   And this, yes, this above all else. If something pisses you off, don't run to the internet to whine about it first. Check up, and do your research. Ask people about the regular state of play inside the industry.

   Learn that titles are not unique. And learn that it's a bad idea to run to anti-social media with non-news that someone has ridden the tails of your coat when no such free taxi-service materialised.

   Now I'll expand on this short piece and bundle it in a book. Needs a suitable title. Stacking Vaginas...

THERE'S NOTHING LEFT TO SAY ABOUT FALEENA HOPKINS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

No, I'm not late to this party. I went to the other place, and dropped by here as the dawn rose and the clean-up was well underway.
   The dust settled over the dust that had already settled over this one. That's deliberate. I didn't feel like jumping in feet-first and head very far behind the action when the story crashed into the wild. Here's the long and the short of it...

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I wish more authors would read copyright law and cast a glance over trade mark law when deciding to embark on the stormy journey of turning themselves into authors.
   Do you want to be a writer? Read the copyright law covering your jurisdiction. Check out the law in other countries where your work might wash ashore.
   I've been involved in copyright issues as a matter of routine. Occasionally, I've brushed up against copyright's industrious cousin, trade mark law.
   And I've resolved all the issues without recourse to a single court battle.

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Before I chased after publishing deals, I made a point of reading copyright law. Scandalous, I know. To think that I'd go and check up on the primary piece of legislation governing the industry I wished to operate in. Yes, BEFORE I sent a manuscript off anywhere.
   What the red wet fuck was I thinking?
   I was thinking...I don't want to be sued over anything, ever. But I definitely don't want to be sued over something that I can easily bring under control - behaviour relating to copyright.
   And that's my behaviour covering my own copyright material as well as my responses to all the other stuff by everyone else and the kitchen sink, too.
   The main copyright law I work under is the 1988 act, amended down the years. But I've looked at the law in other countries and from other time-frames.
   There's nothing in there, or in any of the trade mark acts, letting you smash your stamp down on a generic word like, oh, say, why not choose one at random...the word...
   COCKY.
   This sort of nonsense didn't work for the (far from) Fine brothers when they attempted to stamp a trade mark on (PEOPLE) REACT TO videos, and it didn't do Faleena Hopkins any good when she tried her land-grab on the real estate known as the word COCKY.
   You can't make money from putting my work out as your own. I will Liam Neeson your buttocks. Just take out the reference to daughter in that scene and put the phrase my writing there, instead. Copyright law is there for me.
   But as Robert De Niro insists, there's a flip-side to that coin. I can't charge rent from the entire world and half the moon just by grabbing a trade mark to the word COCKY.

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If you register a trade mark, don't make a mess of it before you start. The money you spend washes away in the rain of your own tears.
   Not the tears of your lawyers - the legal eagles are paid promptly, after all.
   If you think you've come up with a property that you should be charging everyone rent on, ask yourself this important question: did you bother to read and really attempt to understand the law?
   Even then, professional legal advice is recommended thrice-over.
   Authors should stick to writing stories, and not have endless stories written about their conduct. We all learn that the hard way. Some of those scribblers learn it harder than the rest of us, it seems.
   This purple-faced incident was another of those writerly things boiling away over in the world of the romance books. I list a few romance authors in my group of writer friends, and they rolled their eyes so hard at Faleena's moment of madness that the world almost tremored.
   That tells you everything. And so...
   I don't have anything left to say about Faleena Hopkins and her land-grab over the word COCKY.
   Crank up your search engine and wade into the mire as deep as you dare. Plenty of people are out there in swamp-boats, and they've mapped the hazards in detail.

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Read copyright law. When required, read it again. Those acts are amended, after all. Not to the extent that we, as writers, get to camp out over words...waiting for flies to run into the webs we've set up. Hell, no.
   Cast a glance over trade mark law, too.
   I've said it before. Avoid litigation. Instead, create. But I should add...avoid grabbing a word for your own evil purposes. The world will mock you for being too...
   Greedy.
   Come on. You didn't think I was going to end with the word cocky...
   ;)