We make jokes on this blog about what would happen if every word was under copyright and every time you wrote something you had to get a license for each word. So look at Mike Masnick's post over on Techdirt. People make collages of photographs; the individual photographers are mad because they own the individual pictures. The point is: this should be fair use because it is transformative. A collage is an original and transformative use of pictures the same way an essay is an an original and transformative use of words. So this is what we have come to. I could say the same about sampling in music. I guess we must count our blessings and be grateful that language was invented before copyright.

Courts in the Czech Republic ordered a company named Bauhaus to pay 200000czk (~10000usd) to Zdenek Sverak because they used three words on their outdoor ads resembling his song from a 1980 movie which essentially said "you can even bake a bread, you can even build a wall". The ad said "You can even bake ... a wall" as a promo for a cement mixer. http://www.piratskenoviny.cz/?c_id=32496