I read this on ehow.com: Create an original saying, not a variation of another famous saying. "I don't need no stinkin' copyright attorneys," does not qualify as original. Yet a computer technician might use, "I'll make your computer bugs crawl away," for an original saying. Step 2 Embed the saying in a literary work that qualifies for copyright registration. Any piece of writing that could be deemed a poem or short story can contain the saying. Some poems are only two lines long, and they don't have to rhyme. The rest of the article is here: http://www.ehow.com/how_4769672_copyright-saying.html Is it really that simple?

All Answers To Questions

No. Short saying aren't copyright protected. If every sentence in a work is copyrighted we would have already run out of usable sentences.

I guess if you think writing something that qualifies for a copyright is simple then yes. The chances of you getting any money, payment, or recognition for your phrase is minimal unless someone uses it without your permission and you take the initiative to sue. In that case your copyright may not even hold up unless it is absolutely rock solid.

It seems a simple enough process, but there are hidden snags. You get to pay $35 for the doubtful privilege of spending your life from then on trying to spot people who might be in breach of copyright. Not my idea of fun! Worse -- if you should run such a person to earth, there would be an expensive law suit and the outcome might be uncertain. Suppose, for example, that it could be demonstrated that your saying was less original than it seemed and had been used before you ever dreamed it up?

The computer Technician would need to Trade Mark the saying, what you wrote above is so impractical... As WRG pointed out, there are millions of books out there and the odds that your sentence was said somewhere else before you is very high

Some of your answerers appear unclear on the concept of copyright infringement. It simply is NOT a copyright infringement if you happen to come up with the same sentence as somebody else, even if that sentence were already copyrighted. They would have to prove theirs was first, that you had access to it and that YOU COPIED IT! Unlike patents, you can, in fact, own copyright on identical works with any number of people simultaneously. That said, you probably want to use the saying in association with sale/offer of some goods or services and then register it as a trademark (although it can quickly get expensive to do so in many countries). Register at your state level (in the USA) very quickly and cheaply. Then file federal.