Colin McLarty wrote:
Michael Barr wrote:
You would have to ask a lawyer about this, but in general book titles cannot be copyrighted and I would assume the same is true of journals.
You cannot copyright a title but you can protect a well known title from infringement.
Specifically, you use ~trademark~ law, rather than ~copyright~ law, to do this. So a practical question in the case of the name "Topology" is whether Elsevier claims it as their trademark as a journal title. (They don't have to mark it on the cover to do this, although it helps; trademarks often aren't legally identified until the litigation begins.) Note that such a meaningful and relevant (not arbitrary and fanciful) name is harder to trademark at all, but history and recognition help. --Toby