Shakey's Pizza has a new commercial; they have a deal that goes for 19.99, so the "tag" is "Party Like It's 1999."

Can they simply take a line from a song and make it their own?

Time 4 the take down.

[Edited 11/30/16 10:07am]

sro100 said:

Shakey's Pizza has a new commercial; they have a deal that goes for 19.99, so the "tag" is "Party Like It's 1999."

Can they simply take a line from a song and make it their own?

Holy cow! Shakey's is still around?????

LadyLayla said:

sro100 said:

Shakey's Pizza has a new commercial; they have a deal that goes for 19.99, so the "tag" is "Party Like It's 1999."

Can they simply take a line from a song and make it their own?

Holy cow! Shakey's is still around?????

Yes. There's quite a few of them here in Southern California.

Can someone take the stage name from a Pop star, tack "dot org" onto the end of it and host an entire billion page fan site on the internet? And have it be up and running for years?

It's called, "Fair Use".

sro100 said:

LadyLayla said:

Holy cow! Shakey's is still around?????

Yes. There's quite a few of them here in Southern California.

I miss Shakeys Pizza! We used to have it here in San Jose,but now it's gone.

Yes, they can use it. It's like trying to copyright "I love you baby". "Party like it's 1999" is a coined phrase, per se, but it's also part of a larger copyrighted lyric. Think about the people who have quoted Prince in their song. "Like Prince said you're a sexy mutha..." from Salt n' Pepa. Also, America never sued Prince for using the term "purple rain", which was first heard in their "Ventura Highway". So yeah, Shakey's is good.

As a sidenote: You also can't copyright a song title. A good example of that, among many, is Van Halen and Pointer Sisters both having a song out at the same time called "Jump". PS subtitled theirs "Jump (For My Love)" just to avoid confusion, not because there was any possibly litigious threat.

Funny note about the America song, not just the "purple rain" line, but also a note about changing one's name. The full line is:

Wishin' on a falling star
Waitin' for the early train
Sorry boy, but I've been hit by purple rain
Aw, come on, Joe, you can always
Change your name