Is it alright for me to use a title of another book for my own?

United States
July 31, 2007 12:53pm CST
There are a lot of stories out there, and it's easy for stories/books to be similar in a variety of ways. My question is this: I'm working on a fictional story, and would like to use a certain title. I found out that this title belongs to at least one other book. I highly doubt that my story is anything thing like that other book; is it alright for me to use that title?
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1 response
• United States
18 Aug 07
That really depends on the title. There are these two movies, both go by the name The Order. I'm sure there are many movie and book titles that start with the name The Order. If you're talking about a general title like The Lot, The Order, The Monk, the Nun -basically any one word that has an accepted meaning in the English language and isn't necessarily associated with the work- then you should be okay. There are notable acceptions, like The Shining. The basic reason for copyright law in regards to titles it customer confusion, which means you can't use a title that is specifically associate with this one thing and nothing else. I would say that a good rule of thumb is that if the title of the other book has more than one word (not including the) you should steer clear of it, unless it's a common phrase like "and all the king's horses" i would research some copyright law on the internet and if you still aren't sure, you should consult a lawyer. You do not want to get the ball rolling and all of a sudden have to change the name of your book because of copyright, so a little time and money invested on a professional who deals with copyright would be more than well-spent.