My book's title is similar to Around the World in 80 Days. The premise is making a journey in 80 days and while I am sure that using a similar premise is fine (especially since my book is a bit of a satire on lots of common premises). Is it legal to use a similar title?
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See also Where do we draw the line for legal questions? on Writing Meta.– userJan 24, 2018 at 12:05
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Very much related: Can a title be copyrighted?– userJan 24, 2018 at 12:06
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2 Answers
** Disclaimer ** I'm not a legal expert so my first advice would be to consult a lawyer.
For my answer, I would say it depends on how close the title to the original and how obvious it is that the book is a parody.
Doing a quick Google search, there are plenty of books with similar titles to existing titles but which are obvious spoofs (my favourite so far being "The Very Hungover Caterpillar" but even the cover of this says "A Parody" on it) and if you're poking fun at an existing genre, then the more stereotypes you can bring into it, the better.
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Thanks! My books is definitely a parody and I think that is obvious from the tittle and the content. Jan 24, 2018 at 12:54
It is legal to use the same title, but I would still make it a variant of the original to avoid confusion.
The book is out of copyright, so you can do pretty much whatever you want to it.
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A book being public domain doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to it! You're free to republish it or adapt it to a different form, but if you deceived the audience in some way (e. g. published it under a new title as your own work, or conversely used the title and author's name but replaced the content), you would get in trouble. If you want to use the same title as a known book, or a title that can be easily mistaken for a known book, you need to make sure it's clear this is something else.– DiviznaOct 29 at 14:35
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If a book is in the public domain, you can pretty much do anything you want with it, by definition. Nov 15 at 14:18