You are the owner of your name everywhere, period.

You may be the owner of your own identity, but your "name" is a different issue altogether. Aside from the obvious conflict in exclusive ownership of common names (will the real John Brown please stand up), the US federal intellectual property statues are almost mute on the subject. As noted in this case, the common law (and in some cases the registered) trademark may not carry the day in specific circumstances. There is no protection of a name under copyright.

The various states and nations have a hodgepodge of statutes and decisions under various theories such as "invasion of privacy," "right of publicity," fraud etc. It is not easy to figure out if you have any right to stop someone from exploiting your name for gain in a given jurisdiction, and conversely not easy to avoid entanglements by using your own name in situations where it conflicts with someone else's claim of exploitation rights to that name. There is plenty of case law in which a person has been prevented from using his own birth name when someone else has trademarked or otherwise laid claim to the same name for purposes of exploitation.

But a name is just a word, so that makes sense, right? There is even case law that has found that a likeness, and even a voice that looks or sounds sufficiently like a protected persona may violate intellectual property rights of the person you look or sound like. For example if everyone says your singing sounds exactly like Tom Jones, and you make a commercial that might mislead listeners into thinking the song is being performed by Tom Jones, you may run into trouble. The "identity" you think you own may be more limited than you think.

Unfortunately, names are not necessarily unique.

When I sold my previous home in 1997, I discovered that I did not have clear title to it, due to a lien. I'd had no idea there was a lien against the property, but it had been there for 10 years. Somebody with the same name as me had stiffed some company for payment on something. The creditor had simply gone to the telephone directory, looked up the name and slapped a lien without ever notifying me or verifying it was the right person. According to my realtor, that's a common practice. 
 
The challenge, then, was convincing the bank that I wasn't that guy. How do you do that? He lived in the same city as me, just a couple miles away. He was about my age. Fortunately, the bank took me at my word. Had they not, I really don't know how I would have proven it without additional identifying information.

In the cybersquatting case we're discussing, the original registrar of the domain was named Ron Paul. You shouldn't lose the rights to your own name just because someone more famous than you shares it. But he lost those rights when he sold the domain on eBay. (There are, however, plenty of precedents for people losing the rights to their own name. There was a restaurant in Michigan called McDonald's that was forced to change its name even though it was the proprietor's given surname. )

John Smith 1, John Smith 2, ... etc. There are numerous ways to add a unique identifier to your name. A problem to be sure, especially when the ownership of Meta-tags is going on. Trying to get around re-directs can ruin traffic to a website. Every time a new resort opens in Vegas, cyber clowns attempt to buy the domain names for the resort and sell them back for enormous amounts of money. I see it as outright theft. When your name and the associated product you are selling connected to your name is involved, I look at it as identity theft, and the attempt to sell it back to you as extortion.

Would be cheaper to change your own name. £13.39 in the UK apparently. I'm curious to know how they arrived at that figure. Very specific costing or the first number they thought of ?
 
According to a website I just looked on, there are 200 people in the country with my name and I'm not any of them ! Have I been using the wrong name all my life ? Is my whole life as I know it a complete lie ? Am I really called something else and just having a very long, and really quite dull dream that I am the person I think I am ? Was my real identity kept hidden from me because of some secret past ?
 
Answers on a postcard to...........oh wait, they'll never get here because I'm not one of those people with my name.
 

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

craigb

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

Well, that was £13.39 well spent.
 
Now I just have to figure out who I really am.

paulo

craigb

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

Well, that was £13.39 well spent.
 
Now I just have to figure out who I really am.

Major Major Major?

Interesting stuff.

On a similar line, didn't some guy back in the 90s have the forethought to register 21st Century Fox as a name in the hope he could sell it for a huge profit?

SteveStrummerUK


Interesting stuff.

On a similar line, didn't some guy back in the 90s have the forethought to register 21st Century Fox as a name in the hope he could sell it for a huge profit?

Yeah, that was me........well, it would have been if I'd thought of it before the other guy. Not to worry, I spent all my savings buying 22nd Century Fox instead, so I'll clean up next time....he, he.....
 
Oh, wait......................................D'oh !!

57Gregy

paulo

craigb

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

Well, that was £13.39 well spent.
 
Now I just have to figure out who I really am.

Major Major Major?

You mean Major Major Major Major ?