Obviously when people say Harry Potter, they will think of JK Rowling’s books. But it’s not like it’s an uncommon name. It was chosen because it’s not.
So let’s say an author publishes books, would he be allowed to use his own name, or because it’s more associated with a particular series he’d have to change his name.
Comments
Yes, there’s actually was a legal book written by a Harry Potter, a lawyer, something about the regulation of UK laws or something along that line.
Yes. lawyers aren’t dumb. if they see somebody has the given name of Harry Potter and isn’t trying to infringe on the franchise they aren’t going to file a lawsuit. How if you’ll excuse me I’m late to an appointment with my doctor Luke Skywalker
He’d be perfectly allowed to. He might want to use a different name to avoid the association if he doesn’t want reception to his book being colored by the author’s name being the same as an extremely popular fictional character.
The name “James Bond” was actually taken from an author, interestingly enough.
The author could just use their initials like JK Rowling does and use Harry J Potter or HJ Potter
This was actually a question on my IP Law final haha. Short answer….
Copyright and Patent protections do not extend to names. So, nothing to worry about there.
Names can be trademarked, but trademarks apply to specific classes. If the author’s name is Harry Potter and they are not making any illusions to the character, then yes. That’s totally fine. (I believe there’s a law professor named Harry Potter that has published several books).
Now where it gets fun is what if an author named Harry Potter wanted to write a fantasy series… there’s arguments to be made for/against on either side. Is the author leveraging the trademarked named as a form a promotion? Are they benefitting from the trademarked name? Maybe? I believe WB owns the trademark so have fun fighting those lawyers.
Practical and cheapest solution would be to avoid the hassle and use a pen name or initials. Unless your publishing company is willing to fight that fight for you (which they probably aren’t).
If my name was Harry Potter I’d publish a book called ‘J.K. Rowling’.
I think it’s allowed but not really to the author’s advantage. I remember the poet Ben Kingsley used to have “not the actor” in his bio, until finally starting to publish under Benjamin Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
They can use their name as the author but not as the title or a character in a fictional story.
Most people in that situation would choose to use a middle name or at least middle initial. It isn’t an “allowed to” thing. It is just a “don’t wanna deal with the jokes.”
Something like Harry M. Potter, or even, if they really didn’t want to deal with it, H. Matthew Potter.
I’m not sure about the answer to this question, but for my job I was trying to put an ad on a product page for Amazon. Someone who reviewed the product had the last name Price, and we were including that review in the ad. It got rejected because we aren’t allowed to use Price in an ad, regardless of its usage. I could see there being major issues with an author named Harry Potter.
McDonald family in Scotland was sued by the buger joint for opening a resturant using their family name.
Star Trek has a character named Christopher Pike. There is a author named Christopher Pike.
I don’t recall there being any issues.
There is a person who self publishes on Kindle using the name Steven King. I almost fell for it.