Lesson 29

Writing Class 101 by Rick Kurtis
 Copyrights and registered trademarks. Lesson 29
 It’s been a whole week, and I hope yours was as blessed as mine. A lot of you have asked if they can use places in their book without getting into trouble. I should’ve talked about this earlier in our lessons while many of you were writing your books. I have heard and read that you can use a town, or a place as far as geography, but shouldn’t use a place of business or anything with a trademark, or words to a song without permission.

I wrote a book that had music all the way through, and wanted to have the character singing the lyrics to a song. I went through all the right channels and hired a copyright lawyer company to make a deal with the persons that own the rights to that song. Twenty-one simple words, not even the whole song. The song or music was written by one person and originally sang by another, so they both needed to be paid. They owned the copyright. They said it would only be $2.50 to five dollars depending on their negotiations and will take only around three days. Three weeks later, I couldn’t even get out of the lawyers office. During that time I heard that they did releases in lots of one to 50,000 sales than if you sold more they would make another deal. Not my lawyers. They needed to know now, up front of how many books I was going to sell. I told them I could sell one, or I could sell thousands. I didn’t know. Nobody knows how many books they are going to sell. So, they got nothing. I took the words out from my book, and asked Pay Pal to get my lawyers fee back because they did NOTHING but waste my time. LOVE Pay Pal. According to rights, you can use a title from a song with even the artist name who sang the song, but that’s all. If the songs are public domain, then you can use the entire song, which I did keep in the book. Daniel Peters, ace reporter, B-29 Found has over thirty titles to entice the read.
In my first book, I thought I would use Burger King, but again too much hassle, so I made up a name or just said favorite burger joint. If and when your book is turned into a movie, they could use Burger King because movie people might talk them into helping to sponsor the movie, or Burger King might want to use the movie for advertising. I really don’t know how that works. Let’s move on.
Pancake house, waffle box, any type of place. Using a registered trademark company might cause a problem if your book soars. They could sue you for that very reason instead of helping you to market. They do not think it as you marketing their store. Go figure, so don’t tell anyone to watch a commercial you saw for Pepsi, Bud, or Pizza Hut. Keep everything generic, and if you hit the big time, maybe they will want in when it is in the movies.
Some authors think they will just leave it in, because nobody cares. Just remember, going to court starts at a $10,000 price tag, and your book can be pulled from the shelf, and you can be fined to pay them and their lawyer’s fees. They are not huge companies because they are nice, and they have very expensive lawyers who know the rules and regulations.
This is also why you need to copyright your work. You really don’t know who could know someone else that you don’t know, and tell them about your book, and they make a movie or TV series out of it. So many times I have had ideas for things and even drew up designs and plans, but I never patented them. Other people did, and I see my idea years later on the market. Not to say they stole it from me, but had the same idea and followed through. Had I filed a patent first, they would have to share their profit with me.
I am weary of editors, and even beta readers. My college professor told us a story about an idea she had for a series on television. She wrote it, copyrighted it, and submitted to a studio, because at that time she was in the industry, Hollywood. They declined her script, and months later they changed it, tweaked it just enough and produced ‘Murder She Wrote.’ That was her idea, stolen, and she couldn’t do a thing about. She lost in court and moved on. That is this business.
It is also a good idea when making your book cover to make sure the picture you use is not copyrighted. Make sure it is public domain, which means free for anyone to use. If it is copyrighted then you need to purchase the right to use it.
So be careful, and think how to make your book great by using no one else’s logo or trademark. Then protect your work for yourself, and I’ll come up with something new for next time. Until then, have a wonderful week, and
 
Happy Writing from rickkurtisbooks.com