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[cdarcy]

I know that short phrases arnt copyrightable but I have a phrase that is 8 words long and very unlikely to occur in conversation that I would like to copyright for artistic purposes and to possibly make a t-shirt or bumper sticker, am I able to use a copyright for it or do I still have to use a trademark?

(it is a complete scentence and from the searches I've done on the trademark databases and on google no one has came up with it before me)

[Zonath]

Well, since there's been no other answers in 10 days, let me just briefly jump in on this one...

I think that the easiest answer is to say that yes, an 8-word phrase could possibly get some copyright protection, although the extent of that protection might be rather thin, since an 8-word phrase isn't really a whole lot of expression to protect.  And obviously, you can claim a copyright in  pretty much anything and slap a copyright symbol on it and hope that is enough to convince people not to steal it.

In the end, if you brought a claim on a copyright of an 8-word phrase to court, without more, I think you'd have a difficult case to prove, even if it wouldn't technically be impossible to find some creative expression to protect in an 8-word phrase.

At the same time, if you have a phrase that you're basically using as a trademark (slapping on T-shirts), then you'd probably be most protected by registering both trademarks and copyrights in the phrase and whatever logos and other images incorporate the phrase.  Of course, I can see how spending a few hundred a pop just on filing fees for trademark registration might be something of a deterrent, but it would almost certainly offer additional protection.