Copyright and latin descriptions

[Kent Perkins]

At 10:09 PM 10/17/98 +0200, Richard wrote:
>I have feeling that thanks to copyright law are all new names are protected
>and cannot be used at any  paper oc check-list and  not only in any
>publication but cannot be used at any determenation label without written
>permisiion for each specimen from publisher....
>
>Regards
>
>Richard

Copyright law is often misunderstood.  There have been some changes in the
US law in the last few months, but i believe the following is still true.

>From the U.S. Gov't. Copyright Office
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/faq.html#q44
"How do I copyright a name, title, slogan or logo?
Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In
some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks. Contact the U.S.
Patent & Trademark Office at (800) 786-9199 for further information.
However, copyright protection may be available for logo art work that
contains sufficient authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may
also be protected as a trademark."

Therefore you may use scientific names freely.

Language would be useless if words, names, phrases, etc. could be copyrighten.

Best wishes,
Kent Perkins
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