How do I know if I am using copyright material?

Welcome, MSD!

You can use names you mentioned. Those would most likely be trademarked.

Copyright material is anything anyone else has written by someone no matter venue (napkin, web, paper, published, unpublished, etc). Here is an article I found which says anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain.

If you want to use copyrighted material, you must get permission.

Supercalifragiwhatsit is a made-up word and part of a song lyric and that's no doubt where the copyright issue lay -in the quoting from a song.

If you are not deliberately quoting from things other folk have written you have no copyright issues to worry about.

Re trademarked items such as you list, you can mention them as often as you wish - these things are all part of everyday life. Trouble only appears on the horizon if you write bad things about them.

Just use common sense, don't slag any product off, keep your personal opinions about them to yourself, and you'll be perfectly okay.

I just started reading the book Cyclops by Clive Cussler and noticed that he referred to copyright material he used in his book. It was the word, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." He had to mention who owns the word. It made me think. Am I using words or names of products that are copyright protected?

For example, can I use the words Microsoft, Jeep, Starbucks or can I refer to a James Bond movie.

How do I know if I am using copyright material? Is there a website that can help me find out if what I am using in my book is not infringing on copyright material? Are the laws international? I live in Canada, so are the laws the same in Canada as it is in the USA?

I can really use some help on this issue.

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The super-whatzis word would be a trademark, not a copyright issue. It makes people think of Mary Poppins, so it has commercial value to the owners, whoever they are. That makes it a trademark, whether it's registered or not.

That doesn't mean that the owners will come after you for it, unless they thought it was in their financial interest (which is unlikely, given the cost of IP lawsuits.)

It depends on how it's used, too. If you're writing about someone going to see Mary Poppins, and their child sings 'supercali...' after leaving the movie, it would be hard for the owners to prove damages from use of trademark.

Canada's IP laws are much the same as in the US, but the US First Amendment is generally a stronger argument in court than the equivalent parts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Note: not a lawyer, and they won't let me play one on TV, either.

dangerousbill said:

It depends on how it's used, too. If you're writing about someone going to see Mary Poppins, and their child sings 'supercali...' after leaving the movie, it would be hard for the owners to prove damages from use of trademark.

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Especially since Disney were sued for using it, and it was ruled that "variants of the word were known ... many years prior to 1949".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious#Legal_action

Nothing to do with trademark.

JimmyB27 said:

Especially since Disney were sued for using it, and it was ruled that "variants of the word were known ... many years prior to 1949".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious#Legal_action

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Referring to commercial products, institutions, songs, books, movies, etc., is not a violation of copyright or trademark or any other intellectual property law.

You want to avoid portraying identifiable institutions and corporations in a defamatory light. That doesn't mean that you can't, or your characters can't, have negative opinions about them, though. You just can't make stuff up that makes them seem evil.

"Joe went to Disneyland and thought it was boring and overpriced" is fine.

"Joe went to Disneyland and found out it was a front for human trafficking" will see you in a world of hurt from lawyers.

IceCreamEmpress said:

"Joe went to Disneyland and found out it was a front for human trafficking" will see you in a world of hurt from lawyers.

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It's not?

Susan Littlefield said:

Here is an article I found which says anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain.

If you want to use copyrighted material, you must get permission.

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Copyright can depend on where the copyright was issued and when.

In the US only works prior to 1923 are out of copyright, however, there are probably legal issues about this is the author is still alive (which is possible) so you would need to check that.

Copyright now is until the death of the author plus another 70 years (or sometimes 50, or sometimes as much as 80 depending on where you are)

HOWEVER there are caveats for increasing the duration of copyright, and it should be noted that eh US copyright system is quite different - with a 28 year renewal cycle that the UK doesn't have. So some works can be very recent and still out of copyright.

This article is quite good though

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html

shaldna said:

it should be noted that eh US copyright system is quite different - with a 28 year renewal cycle that the UK doesn't have. So some works can be very recent and still out of copyright.

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No, not anymore. That 28-year term + renewal for another 28 years is an old version of U.S. copyright statutes that no longer applies, and hasn't for many years. But when U.S. copyright statutes have been revised, they have never been made retroactive (thank God).

But the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, passed largely to benefit the Disney Corporation, essentially froze all copyright terms until 2018, with the proviso that anything already in public domain remains in public domain. Which, effectively, meant anything published in the U.S. prior to 1923 was public domain, and nothing after that would lapse into public domain until 2018.

If then. I'll bet Newt Gingrich's political future that Disney or some other big publishing/entertainment concern will whine and lobby hard enough to get another similar extension passed before 2018. Any takers?

caw

shaldna said:

Copyright can depend on where the copyright was issued and when.

In the US only works prior to 1923 are out of copyright, however, there are probably legal issues about this is the author is still alive (which is possible) so you would need to check that.

Copyright now is until the death of the author plus another 70 years (or sometimes 50, or sometimes as much as 80 depending on where you are)

HOWEVER there are caveats for increasing the duration of copyright, and it should be noted that eh US copyright system is quite different - with a 28 year renewal cycle that the UK doesn't have. So some works can be very recent and still out of copyright.

This article is quite good though

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html

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Thank you for the clarification, Shaldna. At Cornell, I saw a chart for all the different types of copyright in the US. It was quite interesting. Here is the link. http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Nothing new will enter the public domain until January 1, 2019. However, I too would bet that before that date comes, copyright periods will be extended again. This last extension already seemed pretty clearly to be in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution which says "The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". If you keep extending it over and over again, it pretty clearly is not "limited". Copyright is an exchange, authors get the exclusive rights to their work for a limited time, and in exchange, the books will, after that time has expired, become public domain.

Some present the Public Domain as some sort of abyss where works fall into and are lost. The opposite is true. One reason that Shakespeare is performed in so many parks is because it is public domain. No one needs to pay to perform his plays. It is extending works without limit that makes them disappear into limbo. Walt Disney made a living mining the public domain. Eternal copyright will make culture grind to a halt.