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Posted

Do you have to pay royalties if you did a shirt that said Prepare to be boarded, Surrender the booty, A Pirates life for me....etc.......Or any Piratical saying. Did a quick search, couldn't find anything. These phrases are not from a film or anything..

Help.

Thanks!

Posted

To claim copyright, you have to be able to prove that the phrase (Or whatever) is your intalectual property. ie that you thought of ot first.

You may have a problem with "A Pirates life for me", for example, because it is a line from a song by lyricist Xavier Atencio and composer George Bruns commisioned for Disney.

But unless "Surrender the booty" was first used in a book that is still in copyright, (Something like 50 years after the death of the author, but it varies depending on the country, publishers contract and so on) You should be fairly safe.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

The last thing ye be wantin' to do is to be infringin' the copyright's o' another..for if ye do, ye'll be branded a Pirate!... B)

Sea Captain: Yar, that be handsome pete, he dances on the pier for nickels!

Sea Captain: Arrr... you gave him a quarter, he'll be dancin all day.

Posted

Well let's be technical too...

I could put a copyrighted item on a shirt. And I shouldn't get in trouble as long as it's for my own personal use and I neither sell them nor give them to anyone for any purpose or profit.

"Yo Ho, all together

hoist the colours high

Heave Ho, theives and beggers

Never shall we die..."

blackwood.jpg

"I don't care who ye say you are lad, if ye say 'savvy' one more time, I'll bury this cutlass in that thick skull

of yers!"

-Captain John Young - PILF

Posted

I suspect that most pirate lingo is public domain at this point. As such, copyright wouldn't even be a consideration. (I even have doubts Disney could lay claim to the phrase "A pirates life for me!" at this point.)

Joshua made some really good points about not copying styles (fonts and so forth), which, if unique enough, are copyrightable, but for the most part, you're probably safe.

"You're supposed to be dead!"

"Am I not?"

gallery_1929_23_24448.jpg

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