My understanding is a word or short phrase can not gain a copyright, per what I read on the us copyright site. I understand in some cases a word can receive a trademark. I have a question about use of words others have created, and I suspect that trademark law is the only thing that could apply. Here is an example(not my real situation, buy conveys the point): Joe publishes an article online about Yoga, Joe invents several new words and uses them in his article to describe Yoga practices. In his article Joe teaches people about his new Yoga Pose called the Zorkoie.(a work joe created) I'm writing a book / article / web site on Yoga, is there any reason I can't use the words Joe has created? My writing would be 100% my own. I would like to describe to my readers my own directions for doing the Zorkoie Yoga pose. Is there any potential for any legal issues in this situation? The only reason I am questioning it is because I am dealing with some words that the author has created, just as I described above. Would it matter if they did have a trademark registered on the word? (I would guess the answer is no because I can write about Pepsi or any other commercial trademarked name as much as I want in a article or book as far as I understand.) Thanks j
I found the answer to my question on the US governments copyright site (publication circ34). Thank You for your time, j