Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: quotes and sayings

The first thing to understand is that copyright protects the unique "expression" in works of authorship. Due to the fact that copyright is a creature of national law (which is amended periodically by the legislature), bolstered by international treaties, the duration of copyright protection for a particular work is a function of several variables. This is helpfully documented at www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/

In general, under U.S. law, short phrases, such as typically the titles of books or poems, are not considered to have sufficient unique "expression" to qualify for copyright protection. However, the titles of a SERIES of books may be protectable by trademark law. See the discussion at www.publaw.com/titles.html

For works that consist of enough words to be protectable as creative expression, one would seek to clear the work as being in the public domain by finding an example of the text published so many years ago that the copyright has expired.

And regardless of whether you believe that William Shakespeare or Roger Bacon or someone else wrote a work attributable to Shakespeare, the text would have been published so long ago that it is no longer in copyright, and is thus in public domain.

Re: quotes and sayings

That kind of phrase is only protectable as a trademark, and only relevent to you if it is in a close industry to the product you are advertising in your catalog. You can search the trademark database on USPTO.gov to be sure it is not registered, and google to confirm it is not being used. If you know the industry you are working in you should have some idea if it is being used.

As to copyright infringment, the first question is :Did you copy the matter or make it up yourself? If you made it up, it is not copyright infringment. If you copied it from a poem, it is a question of how long the quote is and how old the poem is. I would need more information to fully answer that.