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Was This Title ‘Plagiarized’?
It breaks the Golden Rule, but did it cross other lines?
The other day I read a tantalizing Medium story called “Employers Have Gone From Selective to Just Plain Psychotic” that appeared on August 21, 2021.
I could certainly relate to it — but not to what happened when I tried to find the article again. After entering the title in the Medium search box, I saw a different story — with exactly the same title — posted on June 6, 2022.
Did the 2022 story called “Employers Have Gone From Selective to Just Plain Psychotic” violate the copyright of the author of the 2021 story “Employers Have Gone From Selective to Just Plain Psychotic”?
Not according to U.S. law, which spells out the rule at copyright.gov: “Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases.” In some cases, words or phrases like that can be trademarked, and writers typically hire lawyers to help them sort out the related issues.
Why you can’t copyright headlines
There’s good reason why you can’t copyright titles or headlines. Imagine the legal chaos that would result if a newspaper could copyright a headline like: “21 Killed in School Shooting in Uvalde.” The newspaper…
