Ghostbuster Sues MySpace For Allowing Another Ghostbuster To Set Up A Website With A Similar Name

from the who-you-gonna-call? dept

Who you gonna call? Perhaps a better lawyer. Apparently, a self-professed “ghostbuster” who calls his business “Ghost Scene Investigations” is suing MySpace because some other “ghostbuster” is also using the same name and set up a MySpace page about it. The actual lawsuit claims both copyright and trademark infringement:

Of course, as noted in the article, the copyright claim against MySpace makes no sense for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that you can’t copyright the name of a company. Second, MySpace is clearly protected by the safe harbors of the DMCA. The guy even tries an “inducement” claim against MySpace, which only serves to highlight how ridiculous the concept of making secondary copyright infringement against the law is: people will keep trying to stretch it. As for the trademark claims, as Eric Goldman notes in the article linked above, you can’t trademark a descriptive phrase, and while there isn’t a DMCA-style safe harbor for trademarks, courts will often effectively create a safe harbor for third parties unless there’s clear evidence that they were really complicit.

Filed Under: copyright, ghostbusters, trademark
Companies: myspace