How to Trademark the Name of a Living Person
A trademark is a brand, a legal name or symbol that distinguishes your business or product from the competition. Registering a trademark protects you from other companies trying to use a similar symbol or name. Turning a living person's name into a trademark is difficult, even if it's your name. You can call your business "Fred Smith Cars" if you want, but trademarking it would keep any other Fred Smiths from putting their names on an auto dealership. American law considers that unfair, but it is still sometimes possible to make a trademark out of a name.
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Instructions
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Ask for the owner's permission to trademark his name. You can't trademark a living person's name without his consent, the BitLaw website points out, and if the name is a famous one, you may need the consent of the specific person who made it famous. In one case BitLaw cites, a restaurant tried to trademark the "Prince Charles" name for one of its steak cuts. The court ruled that even though there are probably many Prince Charleses in the world, the restaurant still needed the British royal's permission.
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Establish a secondary meaning for the name. By itself, a person's name can't be a trademark; it has to be so identified with the product or business that people no longer see it as just a person's name. On his website, California attorney Ivan Hoffman compares the situation to Apple, the computer company: "Apple" is a generic noun, but people buying computers now think of it as the company name, not just a reference to fruit, so it can be trademarked.
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Search the database at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. If you find that the name you want, or one very close to it, has already been trademarked, you're out of luck, the Publish Lawyer website notes. If it's not taken, you can try to register it yourself.
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Apply to trademark the name. You can submit your application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by mail or online, but not by fax. Your application must include a drawing of the proposed trademark and some examples of how you're already using the name in business, such as labels, signs or advertising. You'll also have to pay a fee.
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Tips & Warnings
If the name belongs to a deceased president whose widow is alive, you have to secure the widow's permission to trademark the name.
