I was asked to make a zombie cake and the lady would like ''The walking dead'' on the cake, I was wondering if the words would be a copyright issue? (I'm thinking yes) If so if a make a guy with wings and leave off the words would that be o.k? This copyright stuff is such a pain...lol. 

Thank-you

Lori

Hey Lori.  I'm no copyright expert but my guess would be that the words themselves would be OK if they were just written on (it's a phrase I have used on a regular basis to describe my friends after a night out ;-) but would be problematic if you were making them emulate the logo for the series.  No idea about the guy with wings...I've never seen the show so no idea if that is a character or not??

 If you want to be really thorough about trademarks, go to the US Patent and trademark Office site and check. I did a search and here's the page listing the Walking Dead' trademarks. If you click on the TSDR box, then the goods and services sections on each page, it lists all the different categories that the phrase is trademarked for, and pastry and baked goods isn't included on any of them. That's for the phrase itself, but the logo would be a copyright issue, and you shouldn't use that at all.

Okay... I tried to post the link twice but the affiliate links from this site are making it not work.

For future reference, go to uspto.gov, do a trademark search, type in the phrase you're looking for, use the second dropdown box for exact phrase, and there you are.

Thank-you snowflakebunny and costumeczar, I've done so much research on this since learning cakes also apply to the copyright laws. There is such a fine line on this topic.  I'm going to check that site right now. 

'the walking dead' is a synonym for a zombie -- 'funny cartoon animal' is a synonym for mickey mouse -- so i really don't think there's anything wrong with using words like this because they are published in the dictionary like that --

if you make a solid reference to a specific entity like mickey mouse or to the movie -- i guess there was a movie or a book entitled 'the walking dead' with specific characters portrayed then maybe that'd be an issue but referencing zombies as the walking dead is simply what they are legitimately called --

if zombies often have wings then why not -- dark gray area in more ways than one