Can I Protect My Tagline With A Copyright?

Can I protect my tagline with a copyright? I'm going to answer that in the next three minutes. I'm Angela Langlotz. I go live here on weekdays to talk about trademarks and copyrights. And today I'm answering a viewer question. If you have questions, you can drop them into the comments below this video and I'll answer them in a future live, just like I'm doing here for Steve Symington. He says, I have a tagline and I want to protect it, but I don't have the funds right now to register a copyright.

So I was wondering -- or a trademark. So I was wondering, can I protect my tag line with a copyright? And the answer is no. The courts have ruled that words and short phrases are not sufficiently creative enough to be protected by copyright. Remember that copyright protects the creative aspect of what you're producing. So copyright would be appropriate for a drawing or choreography or a play or a novel or a poem. So it has to be truly creative. If what you're trying to protect is a short phrase and the association of that short phrase with your goods and services, then you need to register a trademark for that. Trademark is the appropriate way to protect your brand's association with any design or color or word or phrase or any other thing that you're using to distinguish your goods and services from other people, services, goods and services in the marketplace.

So copyright doesn't work that way. It doesn't do that. So copyright is to protect the creative aspect of your creations. You can also register a trademark to protect the symbol or logo or word that you're associating with that creation. But the two things aren't the same. So you need to understand that before you go filing things willy nilly and thinking that they'll do something that they really won't. So, again, if what you're trying to protect is the creative aspect of some of your work, then register a copyright.

If you're protecting the association of something with your brand, then that is the province of trademark law. I'm Angela Langlotz. If you have questions, drop him into the comments below. I'll answer them on a future live. You can find me online at TrademarkDoctor.net. I'm on YouTube at video dot TrademarkDoctor.net forward slash YouTube. I am also on Facebook at Facebook, dotcom forward slash TrademarkDoctor.net. And I go live here like and subscribe to get my newest videos about trademark and copyright law.