talkmagic.co.uk

I really don't understand what you're trying to achieve other than make a symoblic gesture of the ownership of your own life. I'm sure there are better and more powerful ways of doing so.

Also, I believe that in order to claim copyright over something you must show reasonable evidence that the copyrighted item is your own intellectual property. This means, sadly, we cannot claim ownership of our own biometrics, say, and then charge the government a fee for their use.

As for trademark law, you'd be asked when attempting to register your name as a trademark to give the field in which the trademark applies. In other words, if you were a grocers and trademarked your name, you'd have difficulty fighting a case where someone else was using the same name as the trademark of their airline. This is essentially where the McDonald's trademarking comes unstuck. They couldn't have a case against McDonald's corner shop, because McDonald's TM does not operate a corner shop.

Farlsborough wrote:Gary, I can't help but feel that this is taking you in a different direction to your Buddhism? I mean really, who gives a sh*t?! Does it improve your life and the lives of those around you to know that you've made some wordy legal statement that will frankly never make a jot difference to anything that happens in the real world?

Not being accusatory here, I'm just wondering!

I have given this a lot of thought, as I'm sure you can imagine. It is important that that I live my life according to Buddhist principles. My sense of the matter, and really this is the only thing I have to go by, is that I am not behaving in a manner contrary to Buddhist principles.

As to who cares, increasing numbers of people are beginning to care about this sort of stuff. Yes, these sorts of documents can make a difference, maybe not the copyright notice, though.

On the back of the responses in this thread I went round to a friend of mine's to raise the points that had been raised (i.e. you can't copyright a name or biological material). Looking through his copy of Black's Law Dictionary would seem to support that view - one of the crucial elements that determines whether something is copyrightable is that of authorship which involves creativity.

I haven't had a chance to chat to the person who came up with the Notice to get his take on it, and when I was talking to my friend we were interrupted, but the seeds of the discussion have been planted.

I want to thank those of you who have responded with criticisms or objections. As already stated, I'm not an expert and I'm educating myself as I go along. Your responses are proving invaluable in that they are forcing me to critically question things I might otherwise just accept.

Ah, someone threatened to take me to court yesterday regarding a completely unjust debt....
Something about unpaid interest charges. They were very clear that they had never lost a county court claim; I stated I have never had a defense rejected and hung up on them. There claims were completely inaccurate anyway. Bring it! It's gonna cost them more if they go with it anyway!

A good example of what is legal is the brand Guinness. In essence, my second name is trademarked by a corporation but only in relation to beer and probably drinks in general (though I could fight that). However for anything else I am free to use it.

As to the trademarking of a stylised version of your name, the Arthur Guinness signature you see on all Guinness's is trademarked, not the name itself, just that representation. Now I would asume they are only able to trademark it as it uses a nonstandard font. You'd really struggle to do it if it was written in Arial!

themagicwand wrote:Fulham won.

Fulham won, Arsenal nil...

Harry Guinness wrote:A good example of what is legal is the brand Guinness. In essence, my second name is trademarked by a corporation

THIEF!!!!!!

I'm still interested to see if Gary every managed to pay his billls by using those giro slips that are attached to the bottom of the payment reminders.....

*runs and hides from Mandrake and his 'thread padlock'*


Sean

Klangster1971 wrote:I'm still interested to see if Gary every managed to pay his billls by using those giro slips that are attached to the bottom of the payment reminders.....

*runs and hides from Mandrake and his 'thread padlock'*


Sean

Of course you can..... along with the money out of your bank account

Lawrence wrote:

Klangster1971 wrote:I'm still interested to see if Gary every managed to pay his billls by using those giro slips that are attached to the bottom of the payment reminders.....

*runs and hides from Mandrake and his 'thread padlock'*


Sean

Of course you can..... along with the money out of your bank account

Let's not, eh? While the A4V process is continuing, after all the tantrums it caused last time it's best to leave it alone. You people aren't ready for it (hehehe).

I spoke to the guy who wrote the copyright notice last night. He was saying that there was a case in which a judge ruled that one could trade-mark one's own name and copyright one's biological material under common law. He didn't have the case notes to hand, but I'll bug him about it until he digs it out.

Gary Dickson wrote:Let's not, eh?

Amen to that .....