What's in a Name?

I was perusing the internet looking for things to blog about when I came across this weird article on cnn.com. Apparently, a man from a small town in Wisconsin was running for Sheriff and losing horribly. So rather than accept defeat, he legally changed his name to Andy Griffith. He claims it has nothing to do with the actor Andy Griffith or wanting to capitalize on the name to gain more votes for himself. Sorry guy, I’m not buying that. So now, the real Andy Griffith is suing the guy for violation of trademark and copyright laws. I feel bad for the guy, I mean, he lost went through the trouble of changing his name, but still lost the election and is now being sued. Sucks to be him, but this story does raise some interesting questions. With the increase in file sharing, copyrights are becoming a bigger and bigger issue. It’s interesting to see this copyright paranoia carry over into something like a person’s name. When does a name become more than just a name? When does it cross over into the realm of commodity?

Another really fascinating case of “name as property/commodity” is (the Artist Formerly Known as) Prince. In the mid-90s he had a falling out with Warner Bros, which was his record label at the time. During the disagreement, Prince would only appear in public with the word SLAVE written on his face. Although Prince is his given name, Warner Bros. trademarked it to use it as a marketing tool. As a result he changed his name to that symbol thing for several years. It was not until his recording and publishing contracts with the label expired in 2000 that he was able to take his name back.

In the Andy Griffith case you have a man using the name of a famous person for political gains. But with Prince, you have a company trademarking an artist’s given name to the point where they’re not even able to use their own name for six years. I’ll be curious to see the collusion of names and copyrights continues to develop and if it will pave the way for copyrighting to become even more personally invasive.

You can read the Andy Griffith article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/11/andy.griffith.ap/index.html