This is the WBZ Book Club. I'm Jordan Rich. I'm often asked the question, how come there are so many books with the same title. Well, if you're writing a book and have an idea for a title, you might think you can copyright it. Well you cannot, but you can trademark it. Copyrights protect original works of authorship, including books, plays, movies,
music, poetry, song, computer, software, and architecture. Trademarks, on the other hand, protect words, symbols, phrases, and or designs that set apart the goods of one party from those of others, and a service mark is the same thing for services. Another big difference between copyrights and trademarks is that you can have copyright protection as soon as your work is published, but you have to register and get approval to have trademark protection.
So book titles are among the list of things that cannot be copyrighted. Titles aren't considered intellectual property, but are only short phrases not eligible for copyright. I'll have more on the copyright versus trademark issue coming up, and there's a whole list of other things besides titles you cannot copyright. That's the book Club WBZ Boston's news radio