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."
"any reasonable judge would throw it out."
What? They have reasonable judges now ?
graspee
I can understand the case of Nissan vs Uzi Nissan, because to 99.9999999999999% of the world's population, "Nissan" is a car maker. There's no confusion here.
However, for name or family names, it should be 1st arrived first served. Like it was the case here. There can be confusion because you can't poll the earth's population and ask "if I tell you "such name" can you tell me WHO I'm refering to?)
Ex: "Wayne Gretzky" doesn't mean shit to people who don't know hockey (ok perhaps a bit in Canada and the USA, but who knows if there's not a famous "Wayne Gretzky" in any other stuff like mathematics, or novels, or whatnot).
As for domain squashing, it's up to the companies to grab similar domain names (try "fordsucks" or "fordcrap" or any you can think of. I couldn't get any of the ones I thought of)
Are you on fucking crack or something?
Sorry, but fucking intellectual property isn't going to stop me from using my own damn name.
Some dumb-as-shit fuck-wit who used to be called something else renames himself to a name which happens to be my name, makes a fortune selling worthless crap to mindless zombies, and now I'm supposed to stop using my name or change my name because of said fuck-wit?
You are completely full of shit, and I'm amazed that the idiots who moderated you could possibly moderate your comment as being insightful, when its hogwash.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
You say you are "the submitter", but don't you really mean that you are the receiver?
Lots of petrified grits