Title Right

Titles of brochures, movies, songs and other written documents are subject to trademark law and protection. Titles of documents that have not yet been published but that have already been publicly announced are also protected by law. Therefore, titles of movies that are still in production are protected from imitation.

In contrast to the protection of trademarks, a title protection is created when claiming the utilization of the title, provided that the title is sufficiently distinctive from other titles. The protection of a title before its publication can be obtained by means of notice of title protection in order to obtain legal certainty for your title already during the planning procedure of your work with respect to the name of the work.

The notice must be published in a medium normally used for such purposes and in a way that is in line with the industry standards in order to become effective. It is important that the work is launched within a certain period of time (normally five to six months after publishing) on the market. Otherwise, the protection of the title is no longer valid and the title is available again for third parties. The protection of the title expires with abandoning of use.