Today's useless fact - Can I copyright my own word?

We've often wondered if the unique word we utter after stubbing our toe was copyrightable. Certainly, we wouldn't want others using it -- at least not without attribution.

We went right to the source of all things copyrightable, the U.S. Copyright Office, for guidance. According to the Copyright Office, "titles, names, short phrases, and slogans" are "generally not eligible for federal copyright protections." We're not legal experts, but we assume that your word qualifies as a "short phrase."

Copyright laws were developed to encourage creativity and stifle plagiarism. WhatIsCopyright.org tells us that copyrights can protect literary, scientific, and artistic work -- "provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form." That generally means that it has to be recorded in some way: written on paper, preserved on tape or film, or saved on your computer. Copyright offers protection for authors of original works, whether or not the works are published.

If you want to string some words together to create a song, poem, or story and write them down, then you'd potentially have material protected by copyright laws. Check out the links in our Copyright category for more.