Trademarks for celebrity names

A newly evolving area of trademark law is that of trademarks for celebrity names. Many famous personalities have a legitimate need to protect the use of their name and likeness. Trademark rights offer them the ability to do so. Establishing some type of trademark right will also allow someone to recover a domain name containing their trademark- including a name.

There are limitations to this, at least in the United Kingdom (more info at BBC and Guardian Unlimited.) Sir Alex Ferguson applied for a trademark (or as the British write the term, trade mark) for his name. Sir Alex is the manager of Manchester United, the biggest name in English soccer (similar to the Yankees here in the U.S.) He applied for trademark to cover his name in a variety of areas, including posters, DVD, and the like. His application was rejected for posters, with the judge ruling that his name was too famous to be protected. The judge additionally stated that the name was "devoid of any distinctive character." If, perhaps, his name was Horatio Tinkersnuffle, he may have had a better chance.

This differs with U.S. trademark law, which allows for celebrity names to be trademarked to identify the source of goods (such as films) or services (such as movie production.) Whether this distinctive characteristic holding of the U.K. would apply in the U.S. remains to be seen, and recently celebrities such as Morgan Freeman have been successful in applying for trademarks (and recovering domain names containing their trademark/name.)