Using Quotes in Publishing vs Merchandise

Can you put it on a t-shirt?

[flyingpylon]

If someone says something out loud and in public, I think I'm correct in saying that it's okay to use that quote in an article, book, web page, etc.

But what if you wanted to take that quote, print it on a t-shirt and sell it?

If you did it in the format of:

"This is a great quote"
- name of original source

Is that different than just:

"This is a great quote"

With no attribution?

In some cases, the quotes stand on their own and would be recognizable without attribution. But in other cases the attribution would be critical to providing context for the quote.

Anyone know the legalities involved here? (I'm in the US) Would anything with the name of the quoted source have to be licensed from them to be legal?

[Beagle]

I'm not going to claim to know the legalities of it all, but you could start with this circular at the Copyright Office site: [copyright.gov...] . You'll probably find more information on that site, too, as well as ways to contact them for more specific information. I was surprised at how lenient this circular sounded, as it seems to conflict with something I'd read lately about generally-used phrases not being copyrightable but ones known to be connected with a particular person, company, etc., being protected. The "seems to" may be in the details, which I'm definitely not going to claim to know. As the circular notes, there's also trademark law to consider if applicable, which is completely separate from copyright law.

[edited by: Beagle at 1:26 pm (utc) on July 28, 2006]