One of my friends, entertainment lawyer Robin Mitchell Joyce, wrote an article for a bar journal probably two decades ago in which she stated that it was next to impossible to find a good band name that had not already been taken. I think about this all the time and realize that its more true than ever. This was especially hard in the pre Google era when you had to use expensive search companies to do far flung federal and common law and state searches to try and find out if a particular name was available. Even with the most extreme diligence, one can never be 100% sure that a name is truly available free and clear.
And now you have the strange case of Lady Antebellum, the country trio who have been active since 2006 but recently decided to shorten their name to LADY A "after much personal reflection, band discussions, prayer and honest conversations with some of our closest black friends and colleagues," according to an article in The New York Times.
The only real problem with this is that "Lady A" is also the professional name of a Seattle based blues singer whose real name is Anita White and who has used the name for two decades. It would seem that a quick Google search would have revealed this troubling fact. But the plot thickens. A search of the Patent and Trademark Office records reveals that the band's corporate entity, Lady A Entertainment LLC (which itself was created on August 30, 2010) owns trademark registrations for the "Lady A" mark going back to 2010 and 2013. In other words, while the Tennessee trio might not have known about Seattle's Lady A, they conceivably had a good faith belief that they could use the name since they had several registered trademarks in the name going back a decade.
It is not clear what will happen with Lady A and Lady A. It looks as if after an exchange of angry words, the parties have somehow agreed to co-exist but this does bring to mind the pitfalls of dealing with trademarks in group names. Back in the dark ages when I was in law school, we learned that it is possible to have specific geographical limitations to trademarks, but that seems to be a quaint notion in the Internet age. The Trademark Office does allow owners to co-exist with and allow others to use marks for certain limited purposes, so presumably, that is what will happen here. I don't think that this is a battle that either Lady A or Lady A wish to fight. There don’t seem to be any great options.
