Are Titles Of Books Copyright?
Previous to the existing Copyright Act of 1909 the statutes required, as a prerequisite to obtaining copyright, the deposit of a printed title on or before publication of the work, and the copyright began to run from the date of recording the title. From the importance thus given to filing the title, it became, and still continues, not uncommon for lawyers as well as laymen to speak loosely of "copyrighting" the title of a work. But more than. this, we find in even so classic a treatise as George Ticknor Curtis' "Law of Copyright" the opinion expressed that if the registered title of a book is descriptive of its individuality, and if the effect of its subsequent adoption by another, even for a book wholly dissimilar in other respects, be to mislead the public in their purchases, "then there seems to be no good reason why it should not be regarded as an infringement of the copyright."'