Discussion:
I am from California, and I was quite surprised to be conducting a search online and come across a computer consulting company in Ohio which has the same name as my family name. The reason this surprised me is that all the people in the country with my family name are directly related to me. The person who owns this company is not related. Not only is he using my family name in his business name but also as his website domain name.
My question is simply what legal rights do I have to my name? Or is this person not wrong in any way to use my unique family name?
Answer:
I am from California, and I was quite surprised to be conducting a search online and come across a computer consulting company in Ohio which has the same name as my family name. The reason this surprised me is that all the people in the country with my family name are directly related to me. The person who owns this company is not related. Not only is he using my family name in his business name but also as his website domain name.
My question is simply what legal rights do I have to my name? Or is this person not wrong in any way to use my unique family name? Unless you are the ONLY person in the world with that name, you have no case.
Answer:
Unless you are the ONLY person in the world with that name, you have no case.
I understand that, and that is my question. It's not me specifically, but my family. My family is the only family in the world with that name. Do we as a family have a case then? I seem to recall a case in which McDonald's Fast Food brought a small business also named McDonald's to court for using the name and the courts threw it out mainly because McDonald is a common family name. Does that imply that a family has a right to their name?
Thanks for the help, I'm mainly just curious as to what the legality of the situation is.
Answer:
I understand that, and that is my question. It's not me specifically, but my family. My family is the only family in the world with that name. Do we as a family have a case then? I seem to recall a case in which McDonald's Fast Food brought a small business also named McDonald's to court for using the name and the courts threw it out mainly because McDonald is a common family name. Does that imply that a family has a right to their name?
Thanks for the help, I'm mainly just curious as to what the legality of the situation is. The only families with a name so unique that no other family in the WORD has it is a small band of gypsies in hungary.
You have no case.
Answer:
You have a legal right to use your name.