Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Axel Boldt wrote:
Even for quotations you need the word "likely" somewhere: your quoting a line of Martin Luther King in an article about him is certainly fair use; my selling t-shirts with that quote on it is certainly not.
Are you sure about that ? In Poland I wouldn't hesitate for a moment before selling such t-shirts. Short quotes receive next to zero protection here and I don't know why it should be otherwise anywhere else.
In 1979, a US federal court ruled that Ashleigh Brilliant's "Pot-Shots" are Epigrams, therefore copyrightable, and he's won a half-dozen lawsuits (and several other cases that never made it to court). A "Pot-Shot" has a /maximum/ of 17 (English) words.
To be sure, Brilliant's epigrams are unusual; because of their small size, they're more like images. You can't take an Excerpt from a "Pot-Shot".
-- Toby