Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Yeah. This ain't gonna work.

Lawmaker convicted of rape claims name copyright

A former South Dakota lawmaker serving a prison sentence for raping two foster daughters has sent a copyright notice to news organizations that seeks to prevent the use of his name without his consent.

Sorry, you can't copyright your name, no matter how badly you want it out of the news. For one thing, you can only claim copyright for an intellectual product that you have authored, so your name doesn't qualify. You also can't copyright factual information - such as your name.

I'm not sure, but I think you have an automatic trademark in your name, which allows you to retain the right to be accurately and uniquely identified. In Mr. Klaudt's case, of course, that's exactly the problem ....

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