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what is copyrightable?

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Monday, 17 April 2017, at 10:09 p.m.

In Response To: what is copyrightable? (Bob Koca)

Axel's recent post elsewhere in this thread caused me to see Bob Koca's old question about whether "gammon go" can be copyrighted.

Copyright is supposed to apply to original artistic or literary works. Short phrases such as "gammon go" are not normally considered "literary works" by the USPTO, but they can sometimes be protected as a trademark. Trademark protection differs from copyright protection. If "gammon go" had trademark protection, I wouldn't be violating it by publishing the phrase without permission (as I would if it had copyright protection), but if you were using "gammon go" as a brand name for (say) a game that you were marketing, then for me to use "gammon go" as a name for a game of my own would (probably) be a trademark violation.

What I think you're after is getting credit for coining a term, much as mathematicians typically get credit for being the first to prove a theorem. Intellectual property law doesn't provide any protection for that kind of thing.

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