New cookbooks with the same title - is that ethical?

[Smithy]

As a longtime fan of Lynne Rosetto Kasper and her works, I was surprised and a bit dismayed to find a book written by Maxine Clark and published in October, 2011 with the title Italian Country Table. "How strange," I muttered to myself, "I thought that was one of Lynne's books." Going back to check the record, I see that Ms. Kasper's book (published in 1999) is fully titled The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy's Farmhouse Kitchens. Hmm. Ms. Clark's book doesn't quite have the same title, but if you were going to look for Ms. Kasper's book in a store or online, my guess is you'd use the shorter name to find the book in question.

Is the newer book flirting with copyright infringement? Are there rules - codified or unofficial - governing the naming of books with similar topics?

[mgaretz]

You can't copyright a title. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html. About half-way down.

[liuzhou]

You can't copyright a title. http://www.copyright...q-protect.html. About half-way down.

This link only works if you remove the full stop at the end.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

It is also worth pointing out that this only applies to US law, which is not always in agreement with the rest of the world.

[Chris Hennes]

Setting aside the copyright question (both books were published in the US, I believe), the trouble is that something like Italian Country Table is incredibly general: there are probably dozens of cookbooks with similar names. And across the universe of publishing duplication of titles is really quite common. I wonder how many different books out there are called Sauces, for example.

[LynnFoodies]

We cannot copyright a book's title or an idea, but the copyright protects the actual words and how you wrote them.

I think it applies in UK as well where copyright cannot apply to names and titles

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p18_copyright_names