How could a first name be trademarked if there are many people who have the first name Miley??? What if somebody really named Miley besides the teen star had that name, would that be taken away??? If that is the case, that is wrong.
I am not sure that TM would hold up for anything. It is a first named shared by other people also. If you used it for something not related to her you would be fine. It comes down to usage more than TM. They have to show bad faith.
For instance Disney might be trademarked, but Disney is also a popular last name. If my name was John Disney and I registered Disney-Photos.com or something for my family website they would have a very hard time showing any TM violations.
I would not drop the name until further research. It should only be a problem if you use that name to promote the teen star, Miley Cirus.
Run that by an domain attorney first.
I had a problem with CNN in 2000 when I registered "HeadlineNews.tv" and they stated trademark. Those were 2 common words from the dictionary and they had they legal team contact me to get the name back. They gave up when they finally realized they had no right but try to strong-arm me. We'll 8 years later and I still have the domain.
Last edited by discovernow : 06-23-2008 at 07:10 AM.
From reading the OP's thread, it had me wondering who or what is Miley? Reading this thread, the only value I see it having is to that person or someone with a similar name.
