Slashdot Mirror
Using Your Own Name May Be Infringement, Part 2
phillymjs writes "We're probably all familiar with Uzi Nissan and his fight to keep his nissan.com domain name from the clutches of Nissan Motors. Well, more same-name idiocy came to light today-- the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that their staff music writer, Bill Wyman, has received a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, for "a seriously misleading and, arguably, an intentional, unauthorized exploitation of our client's name, goodwill and publicity value."
It should be interesting to see how this one plays out, because Bill Wyman the musician was born William George Perks and changed his name to Bill Wyman in 1964. Journalist Bill Wyman was given that name at his birth in 1961."
Considering the name change and the dates involved, this one just *BEGS* for the "real" owner of the name to countersue and demand the other change his name back (or to something else).
;-)
Damn, though, *this* one takes balls. I have to admit, paranoid as I can seem, I didn't see it getting to the point where using one's one name in normal daily activities would count as infringment.
Ah well, too bad I don't read Rolling Stone, I can't cancel my subscription in protest.
Well...if Mr. Nissan as a comercial presense, then I can understand the nissan.com. Otherwise, isn't the what .name was created for?
I read about a truck driver in Germany named "Adolph Hittler" who actually lost his job because of his name.
Btw, here is a direct linke to the article: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/living/1102/14wym an.html which is in the original post, but it is sort of obfustucated.
I work in a law firm, and I knew to be afraid when I was helping an attorney scan in some pictures of a nuclear plant specifically to scare a jury... But seriously, a Park Avenue firm costs a pretty penny per hour. If you were famous, would you waste your money on suing someone who (a) had that name before you, and (b) actually returned any checks he accidentally received? Talk about abusing someone...
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. -Whitton
I respect Bill Wyman, the former Rolling Stone a lot (hey I am a bass player, too...) but I do hope that the journalist Bill Wyman wins this one. He had the name first, didn't change it ever and registered the domain name first. And, being a journalist, he does not infringe on any trademark Bill Wyman, the former Stone may own, because there is precious little overlap between their respective trades, however much they may depend on each other.
Bass player Bill Wyman can always register billwyman.com if he hasn't done so already.
...unlike a patent action, an action relating to misappropriation of goodwill does not depend on the notion of 'prior art'. In this sort of situation, the key question is whether Bill Wyman the author is 'free riding' on Bill Wyman the musician's commercial goodwill in order to further the commercial interests of Bill Wyman the author. It really doesn't matter who had the name first -- All that matters is who made it a commercially valuable name first.
Odds are, the writer Bill Wyman's real first name is William. He should just go by William Wyman, or W. Wyman, or Willy Wyman, or something.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
In Germany at least, you aren't free to select a name for your offspring. Offensives names are forbidden (Like Hitler, and a more recent case of a Turkish couple living in Germany that wanted to name their child Osama Bin Laden).
What?
Maybe that's exactly what he should do. And then when they "settle," Bill the writer can make sure that his legal fees are part of the settlement.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Wait, let me rephrase: When Bill Wyman was 47, he started dating/doing a 13 year old girl.
Oh, That's the reputation that his lawyer is trying to protect.
Amusing sidenote: Bill's 31 year old son Steven started dating Mandy's 46 year old mother Patsy and at one point planned to marry her. (This is after Bill/Mandy's divorce). Still, it would have made Steven his own divorced step-grandfather.
I think you'll find it interesting.
I just searched for my own name (in quotes) on google, and found:
- A wildlife foundation under my name
- A gallery under my name
- A cricket player with my name
- A professor with my name
- A folk singer with my name
- Artists with my name
- About 14,000 other links with my name not related to me personally.
I already knew many companies operated under my last name, but didn't know so many used my full name!
So, how many of you are in danger of losing your names like this?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Many years ago when I chose pat.net for my domain I had the option of grabbing pat.com. But I decided that I wasn't a business - I am a person. So .net seemed suitable for my own network connectivity.
Just a thought,
Pat
Check this out.
...
:)
"Lord Macdonald of Macdonald, premier clan chief of Clan Donald, has appointed Ronald W McDonald to be Sergeant-Major at Arms of the Guardians of Clan Donald: the linear descendant of the chief's bodyguard.
One specific aim is to offer moral support to Mary Blair, proprietor of McMunchies, a small sandwich bar in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire, who is being threatened with legal action by McDonald's Restaurants, the fast food chain, for daring to use the prefix "Mc" in the name of her shop.
When interviewed in BBC2's "The Money Programme" a top trademark lawyer made it clear that McDonald's have not a legal leg to stand on. Instead they rely on their unlimited financial resources to bully small businesses who cannot afford to fight back."
Really.. read the entire press release, it just gets better and better. This is coming from a long extended thing that happened around 1996, when McDonalds decided they were going to start trying to crack down on anyone doing anything vaguely resembling their trademarks. I'm not sure if they ever got McMunchie's to change their name, but whatever happened they did manage to piss off, in the process, Scotland. The best bit about the whole thing was that, according to an absolutely fantastic 60 Minutes report on this and the McLibel case, Lord MacDonald of MacDonald was so enraged by the whole thing that he decided to open a restaurant in the traditional family estate of the MacDonald clan, and name it "MacDonald's". The restaurant serves things like duck, and whatever else is the U.K. equivilent of "gourmet" food. Thus far McDonald's Inc. of America has yet to challenge him over the name.
As my more-or-less universal online handle is an abbreviation of my last name, McClure (it's a degradation of MacLeod), i have to say this case holds a small bit of interest for me.. it is a discomforting thought to know that a corporation may possibly want to claim ownership to the first two letters of my slashdot logon
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Almost like this case, certainly very comparable to it, and in a way, even more absurd...
I once read a short story about an ordinary Joe who bore too much resemblance to a famous actor. The actor didn't want any 'unauthorized copies' out there, so he sued the guy and forced him to have plastic surgery to change his appearance.
If Bill Wyman (from birth) loses this one, how long until the science fiction story becomes true? Given the absurdity running rampant through the US legal system, I wouldn't bet against it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You may have heard of this case going before the Supreme Court (Google News listing). The upshot is that a guy named 'Victor' has a store that sells "adult" themed merchandise. He calls his store "Victor's Little Secret." Victoria's Secret is suing claiming that his use of such a store name will harm (via dilution) their famous name and lessen profits, etc. etc. Victor claims that he has a right to use his own name. I can see such a case affecting legal battles regarding similar claims to cyberspace naming.
You've raised some points that for various reasons have been on my mind over the last few months. In particular I've been thinking about the inability of the average American to afford (either by training or by purchase of service) access to our legal system. In what sense of the phrase is everyone "equal under the law" if some people/groups have access to better legal services than others. The obvious solution is this: nationalize the lawyers.
Now I'll admit I haven't spent a lot of time thinking this through but the idea has some obvious charms. Everyone from the poorest homeless person to the wealthiest corporation gets the same level of service and access. This could push the legal system to become more abritrative than adversarial - hopefully resulting in a renewed focus on the pursuit of justice rather than victory for its own sake. (I read about an interesting example of this a few years ago: A law firm started handling IRS audits on a flat fee basis. They had amazing settlement rates because the IRS knew they couldn't drag the proceedings out until the clients ran out of money to pay for their defense).
That might be interesting - especially if he loses. "And now introducing: Bill Wyman. This is not Bill Wyman the journalist, Bill Wyman the plumber or Bill Wyman who runs the Abbey Creak village shop". I wonder how many Bill Wyman's there are and how happy they would be to here that due to a fellow Bill Wyman losing a court case against an "imposter" they would ALL have to put "Not associated with the Rolling Stars Bill Wyman" at the bottom of checks, letters etc etc...
[dis: Posting Anonymously because the companies I reference have already sent me C&D letters because of posts I made on Slashdot]
The lawyers are being paid by someone to do what they do. I remember when I worked at InterAct Accessories, Inc. Some guy had registered InterAct.com way before InterAct was formed as a company. He didn't even use the domain name for a webpage, just mail. I remember my boss' conversation with the company lawyers. It went along the lines of, "Do whatever it takes, I want InterAct.com." After multiple failures to legally obtain the domain name, they had to settle for interact-acc.com. My boss didn't stop, he insisted that I somehow 'hack' the domain name so we could 'steal' it. I pointed out how this was illegal.
The lawyers aren't to blame. It's people like my boss. The people that grew up getting everything they wanted, and when that trait continues into adulthood, you get people like this. They don't care if someone has a legitimate claim to something, they want it, and they'll do anything to get it.
But not as old as the Nissan Forgery in Dresden, Germany, Koenigsstrasse. Founded in 1876, as you can see if you walk by. It's still on the gate. Nissan happens to be a common family name wit the sorb people, that live in the eastern part of Saxony.
So all this "my name is older than yours" reminds me of the old aristocratic people, all maintaining huge lists of ancestors to prove that they deserve rights and priviledges. It reminds me of an old joke, where God creates Adam and Eve and then asks them if they wish for anything else. "Yes", replied Adam, "I would like to have the family name of Hardtenstern." God gets angry: "Adam, you are just the second day on earth, and you are already longing for one of the oldest prussian aristocratic names!"
The aristocratic families of old lost their priviledges during a series of revolutions in Europe... shall we wait for the next series to end all the priviledges bound to the names?
Unless, of course, if it is alphanumeric. Then you have 839,299,365,868,340,000. Even if it is case insensitive it would still be 3,656,158,440,062,980. I think we have a few years before we reach a population in that range.
As a student in Computer science, we had to take a class in Intellectual Property.
After buying my own domain (lastname.org), I asked this specific question: "Do I have to worry about someone coming to take away my domain name from me?"
The answer was no. As long as I use it for my own use and do not infringe on today's copyright (if someone registers my lastname as a trademark later, I was first !)
An important question when discussing IP is "who used it first ?" If someone else comes along later saying "this is my name", too bad for them.
I think it would have been nice if the Journalist BW had put a disclaimer on his Rolling Stones articles *as a courtesy* to prevent confusion, but no way in the world should he be forced to do so through threat of legal sanction. He has a greater claim to the name, in some ways.
Conversely, it would be equally nice that should Musician BW decide to write anything, he specify he is not the Journalist BW.
People overlook these things so often, by just leaping straight to legal threats and litigation. Had Musician BW (or his agent) just written a friendly letter to Journalist BW, asking him to consider qualifying his Rolling Stones articles as a courtesy, I'm sure it would have been readily agreed to. But no, people with lawyers always have to leap to the 'cease and desist'.
By way of example, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once received a polite letter from an American writer of the same name, asking very nicely if PM Churchill could qualify his byline (PM Churchill was also a published author of some note) to make clear the difference between the two. PM Churchill instantly agreed (in a quite amusing reply letter) to always include his middle intial when publishing texts in the U.S. Both sides were satisfied, quickly and without lawyers, by using a bit of civility and commonsense.
Doesn't seem to be as much of that about thesedays.
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
I don't know what they expected me to do about all those copies on BBSs out there, and I don't give a flying fsck what they like to call their software for short. I blew the letter off, and never heard from them again. (I did add to the docs that if anyone gets a complaint, they should rename it to pnamer.exe.)
If Salinon still around, I hope this bugs them: Namer.Zip
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I imagine a bleak future in which parents will name their children strategically, trying to predict the new and hottest up-and-coming businesses and grabbing their URL before the company does (in the name of our child!).
why not letting the internet community decide on who should get the domain. this is not something for the courts to decide.
if people would like to get to nissan by using nissan.com then they will vote for it.
Actually, YES THEY DO. A lot of times a lawyer is retained to "protect trademarks and copyrights", and then they just go off hell-bent to do it without further direction from their retainee. I recall a good while back one of Microsoft's law firms went around cooking up business for itself by deleting the mouse driver off a laptop, walking around to computer retailers and seeing which ones would install the mouse driver to help them out. The ones that did got letters in the mail about their "illegal piracy" (since the mouse driver was copyrighted), and demanded a settlement of $5000 or some damn thing, a portion of which went to the law firm, the rest to M$. It later came out that Microsoft themselves had no idea their firm had taken it upon themselves to do this, and told them to stop when the negative publicity started piling up. This lawyer for Wyman probably is proceeding along similar lines to "defend" his client proactively (and of course bill for his time....)
My reaction to learning how all this works was to suggest that our system should be more like the British system, where the loser pays the legal fees. That would stop these nuisance suits. But it also effectively stops private indivuals from suing large corporations.
How many private individuals successfully sue large corporations in the US? Not many, huh?
Moving to a loser pays system will not make this sad fact appreciably worse. Under a loser pays system, private individuals will have no problems raising the necessary legal firepower to take on Nasty Large Corporation in a fair fight if their case is strong. In such a situation, the risk of the plaintiff losing is minimal, and Nasty Large Corporation will probably settle, or if spectacularly pigheaded, fight the case and lose.
If the plaintiff's case is weak or borderline, they probably won't take the risk of losing, and this is the only real drawback of the loser pays system. I'd consider it a small price to pay for being immune to nuisance suits. Remember, those nuisance suits are just as likely to be a case of Nasty Large Corporation preying on a poor helpless individual.
There was if I recall correctly the case of krupp.de where a guy with that family name lost in court to the steel corporation. The reason was that the corporation had a much higher "public interest" value in the domain name.
.com - to the international corporation rather than some guy.
While this sucks for the individual involved, I think it kinda makes sense to give a Domain - especially
It's pretty obvious this will be thrown out of court, but the real problem here is the lawyers: can the real Bill Wyman sue the lawyers, or can a judge fine the lawyers a huge amount for filing such a ridiculous cease and desist?
I mean obviously the renamed Rolling Stones Bill Wyman wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the lawyers, and any half-way decent lawyer would have informed him he can't force people to stop using the name they were given at birth, so I think if I was the journalist Bill Wyman I'd go after the lawyers for filing the cease and desist.
Maybe Bill Wyman should file a complatin to the Bar Associatation...