Is it illegal to use others' ideas?

I have read a book about how to change yourself and I want to use the content of that book to give speech in my school with the tagline of '; I didn't invent those ideas'; and the speech is totally free. And then I turn it into a workshop, completely free and with the tagline also. Is it illegal?Is it illegal to use others' ideas?
The ideas are not protected by copyright and anyone can use them. You can also claim a one-time educational exemption for copies used in a non-profit educational setting, if you don't have the time necessary to obtain copyright license for excerpts from the book. However, you may only use as much as is reasonably necessary to make your point and probably not the entire book.



On the other hand, if it's a state school, they can't be sued in federal court for copyright (or patent) infringement anyway (under the US Constitution protecting states from suits by citizens of other states).Is it illegal to use others' ideas?
Yes, you can use others ideas but if you want to use copyrighted material from a book you must add your own creativity by using your own words and rephrasing sentences. I've seen people who have created documents that only had about 15% of it directly copied from a book and they get hit with copyright infringement though. So you must seriously rephrase and get creative.
Yes, on a couple of levels.



1) You are using copyrighted content (from the book)



and



2) You are violating Intellectual property laws
The ideas themselves aren't copyrightable or patentable--most ';self help'; is derivative of other people's ideas. What you CAN'T do is advertise it as a way to implement the ideas in so-and-so's book or use the book title, or any unique terms from the book (for example, if the author calls a technique by a certain name, you would have to come up with a different name). You couldn't use handouts from the book.