copyright intellectual-property
Copyright on characters&#39; quotes?
<p>Are fictional characters' quotes / phrases protected by copyright?</p>
<p>For instance, Blizzard Entertainment's video games have characters saying things like &quot;You are not prepared!&quot;, &quot;For Aiur!&quot;, etc. Are these quotes copyrightable or otherwise belong to a particular universe?</p>

<p>A statement by a fictional character is part of the fiction, and so is normally protected by copyright.</p>
<p>A short exclamation such as &quot;You are not prepared!&quot; might be ruled to be too short and not sufficiently original to be protected if it were used separately, but that would apply just as much to a short statement that was not a quote from a character.</p>
<p>But something like one of Gandalf's speeches on &quot;mercy and pity&quot; to Frodo in Chapter 2 (&quot;The Shadow of the past&quot;) in book 1 of <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> would clearly be protected.</p>
<p>The longer and the more distinctive such a text is, the more clearly it would be protected. Whether it is put in the mouth of a character or is part of the narration makes no significant difference.</p>
<p>Note, in a copyright sense a statement does not &quot;belong to a particular universe&quot;, rather it belongs to a copyright owner, often the author, or in the case of a video game quite likely thy publisher.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/76867/copyright-on-characters-quotes/76868#comment162225_76868">this comment by Kevin</a> mentions, and as I should have mentioned, reproducing a short quotation from a work of fiction, particularly if properly attributed, is quite likely to be <em><strong>fair use</strong></em>. See <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/32422/is-this-copyright-infringement-is-it-fair-use-what-if-i-dont-make-any-money-o">Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it?</a> for more specific details. See also the <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/fair-use">threads tagged fair use</a></p>
<p>If a quote is used for a different purpose than the original, in what is called a &quot;transformative&quot; manner in copyright cases, then  it is more likely to be held to be fair use. The smaller of a percentage of the source item the quote is, the more likely it is that it will be considered to be a fair use. The less the use of a quote serves as a replacement for the source, or harms the market for the source, the more likely it is to be considered a fair use. See the links above for more detail.</p>
