Copyright protection for a text line?

Can the author of a book on masonry damp-proofing claim copyright protection for his subtitle "When the house has wet feet"? The Higher Regional Court of Cologne (OLG Köln) has now had to decide this question in the context of proceedings for a prohibitory injunction.

A publisher asserted copyright infringement claims for a prohibitory injunction against the operator of a website. The operator of the website had used the text line "When the house has wet feet" as a slogan for her online offering in the area of masonry damp-proofing. This text line corresponds to a subtitle of a book published by the publisher.

The publisher is of the view that the subtitle of its author enjoys copyright protection as a linguistic work, since the comparison made between wet shoes and a masonry damaged by moisture is the result of an intellectual "creative process".

The Regional Court of Cologne (LG Köln) dismissed the publisher's action. The publisher then had the question of whether copyright protection exists decided in the appeal.

Court decision

By judgment of 08.04.2016 (Az. 6 U 120/15) the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (OLG Köln) dismissed the publisher's appeal. According to the court's assessment, the text line "When the house has wet feet" used as a subtitle of a book does not enjoy copyright protection, since it does not qualify as a linguistic work due to a lack of sufficient creative merit.

For short texts, high requirements must be placed on originality in order to assume individual creative authorship. This ensures that simple expressions of speech are kept available for general use. In the sentence "When the house has wet feet", the court could not discern any particular linguistic design. Rather, the text line was a simple construction that is also possible in everyday speech and also did not have any particularly original intellectual content.

It cannot therefore be assumed that this was a personal intellectual creation of the author.

Conclusion

The publisher could thus not assert copyright infringement claims for a prohibitory injunction against the operator of the website on behalf of its author. However, the assessment of copyright protection is always an individual case decision, so this must be re-examined in each case. With appropriate creative merit, even short texts can in principle enjoy copyright protection as linguistic works.