It Happened Again: Child In UK Initially Denied Passport Over Copyright
from the stop-it! dept
It happened again and it has to stop. Back in 2014, we talked about how a UK woman had trouble getting her passport approved because her middle name was “Skywalker” and the UK’s passport office for some reason thought that Disney would have to give its permission to have the passport approved. There is nothing about a passport that would bring copyright into play, of course, and the passport office was simply wrong. But then it happened again a decade later, this time to a woman who named her daughter Khaleesi, after the Game of Thrones character. In this case too the passport office initially informed the woman that it couldn’t process a passport for her daughter without permission from Warner Bros. After this all made news internationally, the passport office reversed course and processed the passport application.
That was only a few weeks ago. And now it’s happened again, this time once again over someone who’s middle name is “Skywalker.”
Christian Mowbray, 48, is a serving soldier in The Corps of Royal Engineers at the Rock Barracks in Sutton Heath, near Woodbridge. He and his wife Becky, a former serving soldier, booked a holiday to the Dominican Republic at the end of October, the family’s first since 2014 due to their demanding work schedules and Becky’s struggles with Complex PTSD.
However, when they tried to secure a passport for their youngest child, Loki Skywalker Mowbray, the Home Office refused it on copyright grounds, telling the family to either change his name or get permission from the copyright owner, Disney.
Once again, this is nonsense. There is nothing about copyright law in the UK that somehow gives naming rights and restrictions for the children of private citizens to companies like Disney. And if someone really couldn’t get a passport because of a their given name, that’s exactly what would be occurring. And the idea that two soldiers, one retired, would have to put up with this nonsense from their own government is a shame.
Now, as you’d expect, the Home Office eventually corrected itself and began processing the passport. But once again, just as we said the last time this happened, that agency needs to educate its workforce to keep this from happening again. If for no other reason than it must be really embarrassing for them.
Filed Under: passport, skywalker, trademark, uk
Companies: disney
Comments on “It Happened Again: Child In UK Initially Denied Passport Over Copyright”
Skywalker is a common last name
There’s a small village near here where most of the people are Cree Indians and whose family (last) name is Skywalker. There are also several Daywalkers and just plain Walkers.
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Clearly they are criminals. The mouse needs to wipe them out to set an example.
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Just watch out for Skinwalkers. Those are really scary, just ask a Navajo.
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Don’t forget to ask them how many genders there are as well.
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Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.
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Do you serve skinwalkers?
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Chuck Norris might have something to say about all those “Walkers”.
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He’s too busy telling children they have AIDS.
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{{Citation needed}}
How many passports have been issued to people named “Mickey”?
My partner has been fighting the passport office for MONTHS over a ludicrous demand regarding middle names and is essentially being bullied towards getting a name change and getting rid of them, something you don’t really want to do when you were named after two of your great grandparents…
Two names
It seems the article doesn’t actually confirm it was ‘Skywalker’, it’s just assumed to be that one.
It wouldn’t surprised me if ‘Loki’ is somehow also restricted by Disney, despite it being being a Norse god long before.
The only way this is going to stop...
…is on the copyright holders’ whim, and they have no financial incentive to stop.
How long until people born in 1984 start having problems with their passports in this country?
Yet again, someone is misunderstanding the law. In the last case, a passport was refused on trademark grounds even though trademarks are only meant to prevent use in commerce, and now a name is being refused on the basis of copyright despite the fact that copyright cannot exist in any single word, including a name (yes, in the UK too). Besides, even if the name Skywalker were copyrightable, I’m pretty sure Native Americans have more claim to royalties on it than Disney.
Loki Skywalker… Really. It could be worse.
Where are they getting these stupid ideas?
Really, they have a job to do and no where in that job description is anything about copyright. So where are they getting this idea that that is part of the job? Maybe someone should ask them who told them to do that.
Dear Homeawful,
Perhaps you would be best served by explaining if the reason you are about to deny a passport is copyright, please see your supervisor so we might discharge you for being a twat.
Copyright, while its super duper important more than lives even, still does not have control over passports & peoples names. You lot keep doing this stupid shit & making us look even worse than the Tories.
Now leave the nice names alone & expedite those papers so we can send those gays to africa where absolutely no harm will befall them.
Are there actually any requirements for a job at the Home Office? Or do you just walk in with a pulse and get a job?
I think a colleague of mine is VERY happy to not live in the UK.
Their parents are Tolkien fans. Their last name: Took. so take a guess what they named their kid(s).
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“Fool?”
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Fool of a Took?
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Any of the various names cited here.
There’s also nothing in most copyright laws about giving copyright holders ownership of general ideas, such as character names, traits, and general plots; actually, ownership of mere ideas is explicitly repudiated by some laws, such as the USA’s. But courts have essentially made up interpretations that allow for it, contrary to the legal text, thus leaving fan fiction in a precarious state. Kind of like how the DMCA doesn’t impose any liability for ignoring a takedown notice, but courts have decided otherwise.
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Um, what? If you ignore a DMCA notice, you lose safe harbor protection. It’s not liability in and of itself, but you are now certainly at risk of liability.
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You lose the DMCA’s safe harbor protection, not any safe harbor based in other precedent or laws—notably the CDA’s “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”, which should’ve been enough. And of course “we didn’t post that material” was probably an acceptable defense before either law was passed.
What’s actually happened is that courts have gone even farther; saying, for example, that businesses must ban people repeatedly accused of infringement.
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Yes, you can still argue fair use and whatnot, but that’s more expensive.
Except that CDA 230 explicitly doesn’t apply to intellectual property law.
Actually it wasn’t, because US Copyright law is strict liability. The “we didn’t post that material” argument is why DMCA safe harbors exist.
Now on this, I completely agree. You can’t be an “infringer” much less a “repeat infringer” until you’ve been found as such in court. Until then, you’re an “alleged infringer” and the DMCA says a policy for banning “repeat infringers” must exist, not “alleged repeat infringers.”
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There’s no country in the world where it’s illegal to build and fly your own airplane.
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Are there any countries where it is ok to crash an airplane into civilian residences because your experimental airplane was designed by a moron?
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Send the FAA an email asking the question: “Is it legal for me to build and fly my own airplane?”
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As long as it’s an ultralight and you stay out of controlled airspace, sure! You don’t even need a pilots license. From the Experimental Aircraft Association. They quote the specific FAA regulations that apply.
I hate a news story that forces me to take the side of people who named their kid “Loki Skywalker,” but this is quite ridiculous.
Weird that they balked at Skywalker, and yet gave Loki a free walk, despite the fact that Disney owns cinematic use of that trade name too, and of course, the god of mischief has full rights to it anywhere he wants.
It makes me wonder whether they’d deny Bobby Tables a passport because his name belongs to Randall Munroe (despite Bobby Tables being CC licensed).
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I want to see a kid actually named something like
Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--. I have one punctuation mark in my first name, I wonder where the limit is?