(For the three Dopers who don’t know, the phrase is a famous line of poetry from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.)
Can single lines from book/poetry be copyright-able? I assume it has to be a notable and distinguishable line (i.e. nobody can copyright “The end”).
So far as I know, the shortest thing for which copyright has been successfully defended was a one-liner by Ashleigh Brilliant (which, obviously, I can’t reproduce here legally). But that was both longer than the Tolkien quote, and a “complete work” in its own right (as opposed to a fraction of a poem, or a minuscule fraction of a book), so I would imagine that “Not all who wander are lost” would not be copyrightable.
As a historical sidebar, note that the copyright status of the Lord of the Rings itself was under serious question for quite some time.
I have a shirt containing that slogan, under a pair of hiking boots. It’s not attributed, and there’s no copyright sign by the slogan or the artwork.
That’s what made me ask the question. I thought the shirt was a neat concept but I didn’t like the way it was carried out so I searched for other designs. When I didn’t find any it made me ponder whether your shirt designer was the only one who had rights to use the phrase.
A single sentence like that would probably be allowed under fair use. It’s only a tiny portion of the work.
You probably mean this: http://www.jakeslakeplace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3948
I have that shirt too.
I’d buy it in a heartbeat if it was a backpack instead of hiking boots!
Me too!
I also used to have this on a bumper sticker. It did note Tolkien as the author.
Mine is an olive-green long-sleeved tee, from the Grand Canyon.