All in a name

Amongst other things, I'm having a go at writing a musical of 'in sane' proportions... I'm one scene in, with a working title of BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY...what I want to know is this, do Queen have a licence on those two words, or am I free to go ahead, without the fear of having to change the name once the flyers have been printed and paid for? Someone out there will know the amswer for sure ,and if I were a betting man I'd put my moolah on 'Na' or 'Logos'knowing the answer. PS: If anyone steals the name I promise that I shall sue the pants off you!Ha! Johnny Grim A lad in sane productions

The individual words "Bohemian Rhapsody" certainly cannot be copyrighted nor in fact can the combination of the two words. If Queen registered them as a trademark you would have problems but then the symbol of a capital R in a circle would have to appear next to the words in any appearance of those words. I have a play called "...and then you die!" there is at least one other book and several articles of the same title and no-one has ever said anything to me. If the play was about the song? That might create issues. You do realise that Joe Public might assume they were going to see a play about the song. There have been some interesting cases, Bacardi and Coca Cola once tried to get a playwright to remove several disparaging remarks from a play that referred to Bacardi and Coke and the judge advised that for the purposes of the artistic world the words Bacardi and Coke had become such common parlance that they could not limit their use. The same thing happened to the guy who wrote "Blood Brothers" when he named a play "Tupperware Man" and was very rude about Tupperware. He had to stop using the Trademark name Tupperware in his title but could continue with the remarks in the text. Here's another funny one. The Coca Cola Company have recently trademarked the word "Summer". But only when it is presented in their copyrighted Dynamic Ribbon Font. I hope this helps Johnny, my answer would be you're OK go ahead. Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. www.tonymoore.id.au

The short answer, and the most sensible one, is "talk to an arts lawyer". The longer answer, which you should only take with the understanding that I am not a lawyer, is that Queen would have a case to sue you if it seemed your play was profiting off association with their song title. "Star Wars", for example, is not copyrightable in itself, but if I made a film and called it Star Wars, Lucasfilm was sue me in a shot. (This is all a separate issue to trademark law, as mentioned above.)

I think it fair to say that I can use it, for this musical will bare no resemblance to the song, unless of course our piano player should have buck teeth. cheers Grim

The first thing an 'Arts Lawyer' would ask you is for what reason have you chosen that name if not to gain some advantage by identifying with the Queen song? Ssstinger>>>

And the man would say to the homey! You are not reading that right friend! 'BOHEMIAN' is for how we choose to live out on the streets... "RAP' is for the jive that goes wi the beat...'SO' is a needle pulling thread, and DY ... well see that's just those letters that I have ohere on the front of my jacket man! So I don't see how you can possibly believe that I stole the title from...who'd you say there name was? Queen...well I'm telling you for a fact, that I don't hang around wi no Queens...and I'm beginnin to think you is comin down on me cos I'm black! Ain't that right? Black! You're as white as a honkey can be! Yeah! Maybe so, but I'm black on the inside, and that's what matters! I can show you my Motown collection if you don't beleive me..see here..Human Nature's 20 Motown greats... how black do you want me to be? Judge are we finished now, cos I got me a musical to write...