Copyrights obviously exist for a reason -- people are simply more motivated to create when they know that they'll get some credit and/or cash for that creation. In the U.S., copyright laws have been in the Constitution since 1787. But since all of human history consists of people thinking of ways to take good ideas and make them terrible, these days copyright laws have been taken to absurd extremes. For instance ...

5 There's a Trademark on the Word "Yup" (and Other Common Phrases)

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As tempting as it would be, you can't actually copyright a word like, for instance, "cray-cray" or "vajayjay" and stop people from saying it forever, because that would be ridiculous. You can, however, put a trademark on a word, which stops others from using that word commercially ... even if it's something really common, or really stupid.

Trademarking phrases is nothing new: The most famous case is sports announcer Michael Buffer, who currently makes more money from his phrase "Let's get ready to rumble" than he does from actually announcing boxers and letting them know that there might be rumbling. He's reportedly made $400 million by licensing his phrase to movies, commercials, video games and such.

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If he coughs on you, you owe him 50 bucks.

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But here's where it gets dumb: Dave Hester from A&E's reality show Storage Wars not only has a trademark on the word "YUUUP!" but is actually involved in a bitter legal battle over it with rapper Trey Songz, who claims that he's been yupping people since at least 2009. According to Hester's court papers, the main difference is that Songz' version "resembles an animal-like or nonhuman squeal which begins with a distinct 'yeeee' sound before finishing with a squeal-like 'uuuup' sound," as opposed to Hester's own "monosyllabic sounding guttural auction bidding phrase." Here's a comparison so you can judge for yourself:

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Having carefully analyzed both sounds, we've reached the conclusion that they both sound like dickwads. Also, if Songz decides to agree to Hester's terms, what the hell is he supposed to tell him? "Yeppers"? He could go with "Yeah," but even then he might risk pissing off Olympic athlete Ryan Lochte, who's recently put in a trademark request for the word "Jeah," a random nonsense word Lochte screamed during the events.