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<\/a>Q:\u00a0 I have watched\u00a0hundreds of films and read as many screenplays.\u00a0 The question I have is, are lines from movies protected by copywrite or are they considered in the\u00a0public domain? The best example I have is whenever a character or story transports a character to somewhere foreign or bizarre the standard line is “We're not in Kansas anywhere” or some similar derivation. Likewise,\u00a0\u00a0is there some law that says I can't use “Go ahead, make my day<\/a>” in a screenplay that I write?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A:\u00a0 Lines from movies are, in most cases, neither protected by copyright nor in the public domain.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although technically, a line from a movie could be protected by copyright,\u00a0 it's rare that it actually happens. \u00a0\u00a0 You see, in order to be protected by copyright, a work needs to be original. <\/em>To be sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection<\/a>, a line would have to be fairly lengthy, and involve a bit more than ordinary construction.\u00a0 In fact, lines spoken by characters in films need to sound “real”, and real people don't speak in such carefully constructed phrases as to warrant copyright protection.<\/p>\n

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