#What website can i find the movie judicial consent tv#
It's up to the person you're quoting (or their estate if they're no longer alive, or the movie studio or company that owns the rights to the quote if it's from a movie or TV show, etc.) to go after people who are using their words on unauthorized products. What happens if you don't comply? In some cases, nothing. But when you start profiting from someone else's intellectual property, you need to comply with intellectual property law.
If you want to use a quote on your wedding invitations or put a quote over a picture of a sunset and post it on social media, that's fine. (Again, I'm not a lawyer and this blog post is not a substitute for real legal advice.) If you're not selling your work, you can almost always go ahead and use any quote on it you want, under what's known as the Fair Use Rule (more information about that here). It's also important to note that attributing a quote to its author does not make it legal to use the quote, which is something I've been asked. People ask me all the time why I don't sell products with more modern quotes on them: this is why! This is why, in my work, I follow the pre-1926 rule. (Yes, I know a lot of people claim he never even said it in the first place, but that's not the point.)Īs you can see, there are other works published after 1926 that would fall under some of the other categories in this chart and would therefore be in the public domain, but unless you're an intellectual property lawyer or have one at your disposal, it's pretty hard to figure out what applies where. If you break it down into its broadest and easiest rule to understand and remember, it is that works published before 1926 are in the public domain and are therefore legal to use. This is why there are 4 jillion products with old quotes like "Be the change you wish to see in the world" on them - I mean, that's a great quote, don't get me wrong, but it's also legally cleared for commercial usage, since Gandhi said it in 1906. The following chart is from the University of California's website and illustrates how complicated it can be to determine whether something is in the public domain or not: (It doesn't have anything to do with whether the author is dead or alive.) This is where it gets tricky. When a quote passes into the public domain, it's almost always because it's old enough that its copyright has expired. The quote is no longer "owned" by the author and it has passed into what's known as the public domain, meaning it can be freely used by anyone for any purpose. You have the author's written permission to use their words on your work. If you can't get the author's permission for any reason: they won't give it to you, the quote's owner is a movie studio (yes, this rule also applies to movie and TV show quotes, and song lyrics), they don't answer your email, they're dead, they're super famous, they're in hiding, etc., then Condition 2 must be met in order to legally use the quote.Ģ. This means that if you're not a quote's original author and you want to SELL something with the quote on it, one of two things must be true:ġ. Quotes are considered intellectual property, which is protected under the law. I know this isn't a fun thing to hear, but in most cases, the answer to the question "Can I legally use X quote on my products?" is going to be no, with a few exceptions (which I'll get to in a minute).Īccording to US copyright law, the legal rights to a quote belong by default to its author (or speaker). I get asked a lot about the issue of using famous quotes on products, and this post is my attempt at shedding some light on this (very complicated) topic. *DISCLAIMER: I am not an intellectual property lawyer (nor any other kind of lawyer) and this post should not be taken as legal advice or permission.* Updated to reflect changes effective January 1, 2021.