Reserving The Name Of A Movie Or TV Show?

i don't know about TV shows, but i'm pretty sure that in Nigeria the titles of movies are usually registered well before production starts (which always struck me as funny because like 98% of Nigerian movies have very bland, ungrammatical, nonsensical titles like "Emotional Crack," "On Bebded Kneels" [sic], "A Prize to Pay" [sic], and "Girls Cot" [sic] anyway,  so i don't know why they would worry about such titles being stolen in the first place!)

i didn't bother registering mine, though,  i felt pretty confident that my title was too cryptic for anybody to want to steal, and even if they did, let them--i can come up with half a million more unique titles in my sleep.

ummm,  i can't remember exactly where you're supposed to go to register the titles, but i can find out for you.

right, right,  of course it's the censors board (it's early and i just woke up, so my brain is still a bit cottony)

i would expect that you wouldn't have to worry as much about it with TV programs because entry into the market is more restricted and there are significantly fewer people working that medium,  so you don't have to worry about every random Tom, DIck & Harry just grabbing your stuff and hitting the market before you.

of course, that doesn't mean that someone can't steal the title of your TV show and apply it to a movie.

in any case, it's always best to use a working title while in the production/pre-production phase anyway,  for a variety of reasons.