Can You Copyright a Phrase In Neon?
Kelly Mark. I Called Shotgun Infinity When I Was Twelve – 2006
Neon, transformers & acrylic.
Apparently, artist Kelly Mark thinks so. But can you? Not sure about Canadian copyright law, but as some of our readers well-know by now, short phrases are most likely not protected by U.S. copyright laws, especially when the arrangement is done in what one could describe as a generic layout and font style. Thoughts?
More on this story here.
Cat Weaver:
August 26th, 2015 at 11:34 am
Never heard those words put together quite like that before. Isn’t poetry copyrightable no matter how short it is?
Matt:
August 26th, 2015 at 6:19 pm
Over simplifying a bit, but the Canadian standard is that a work must be the product of an exercise of skill and judgment on the part of the author in order to qualify for copyright protection. Most short works probably don’t meet this standard. I can’t think of any cases dealing directly with really short works off the top of my head, but there are cases that say that titles by themselves aren’t typically entitled to copyright protection. And what is a title by itself if not a short work? So I’d think that this phrase on its own would not be found to be entitled to copyright infringement.
The question would then be whether the arrangement involved a sufficient exercise of skill and judgment to earn it copyright protection. I would say arranging things in a generic fashion would not be enough. So it comes down to… is this a generic arrangement? There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly original about it to me, but maybe a determined plaintiff could find a visual designer expert witness to say differently.
At least that’s my off-the-cuff, coffee break view of things.
Paul:
September 12th, 2015 at 12:44 pm
Missing the point. No one is claiming to ‘copyright (a noun not a verb by the way) a phrase in neon.’ Its not the words themselves that merit protection– someone may want to put them on a sweatshirt and that’s fine. It’s the way it is put together, as a whole work of art: the composition, the material, the color, etc. It would be news to artists like Tracy Emin, Noble + Webster, Glenn Ligon and many more that someone could take their neon-text works and copy them without fear of legal consequence. The suggestion that art that uses text as an element may not be protected by copyright would be news to Ed Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner.