Title duplication of book but different book

[depapublishing]

Aloha,
I have started self publishing my children's books and found out that a title of one of my books was copyrighted already.... "The Cinnamon Bear" my book is not related to this book and my book is an original work with original pictures.
Am I in trouble here? I tried to read the copyright law..but couldn't tell.
I was thinking of copyrighting myself as "The Cinnamon Bear.....(the subtitle) the King Family go camping" Please give me some clues here as I was going to advertise with goggle ad words and now am wondering if I am in trouble ...the title is currently "The Cinnamon Bear" and would have to be resubmitted to my on line publisher with different ISBN if I changed it.(a huge hassel...)
Thank you and Mahalo from the Big Island of Hawaii
depapublishing.com
De Pa

 

[Michael Wechsler]

You should have no problem with copyright. For starters, copyright should not apply to something as short as a title for three words. Copyright covers "works of authorship" which are more significant efforts that the law recognizes need protection against unauthorized duplication in order to make the efforts worthwhile. Three words doesn't cut it. Three thousand words will.

What you should look at is trademark. While titles are generally something to which there is some controversy but in some circumstances there could be issues, for example a franchise that exists using a character and unique name.