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Q&A Can I can legally use these song lyrics as book/chapter names?

IANAL, but I personally don't see the issue... There are probably well over a million songs out there throughout the history of the modern era of music. Each CD has what 15 songs a minimum? If you...

posted 7y ago by ggiaquin16‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:20:46Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27634
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar ggiaquin16‭ · 2019-12-08T06:20:46Z (almost 5 years ago)
IANAL, but I personally don't see the issue... There are probably well over a million songs out there throughout the history of the modern era of music. Each CD has what 15 songs a minimum? If you were to go through every artist, big name or no name, each year, dating back to the first time lyrics were recorded on paper we would be in a lot of copyright troubles. The point being that... there are only so many combinations of words before they come up again. Even within lyrics, there are phrases that are repeated. Yes there are trade mark lyrics to a song as @RoBtA pointed out that pretty much everyone knows, but if you asked me to name what songs your chapter titles came from or even the name of your book, I wouldn't even have known they were from songs personally.

Definitely check with a lawyer about this or someone who actually has knowledge in the legal fields, but I find the titles vague enough that they can be passed off for as general phrases even though your inspiration was from songs. Everyone has inspiration, and that inspiration is usually found within the body of work you do. Painters inspired by Vincent van Gogh may show a little bit of his art style. musically... Blake Shelton (a country music singer) has been dating a female singer named Gwen Stephani (was in a Ska band later went solo pop). In one of Blake's songs, he made a reference to one of her CD titles when she was in No Doubt. "_Gonna put a little [Rock Steady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Steady_(album)) on your hand_" - Gonna by Black Shelton. While this isn't directly like yours... people still often use inspiration in their body of works.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-04-20T20:34:45Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 0