Hello,
I’d like to voice my concern on what is in my opinion, an overly harsh and conservative policy. Either there is a fundamental misunderstanding of US copyright and trademark law, or these rules were meant to be a catch all and agents have not been trained well enough to weed out the acceptable vs. unacceptable names. My concerns cover the following bullets:
- Reference religious or historical figures.
- Reference real-life people.
- Reference names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials, or products.
- Use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules.
The issue here is names are not copyrightable. From www.copyright.gov, copyrights are “a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.”
Names, titles, slogans, and short phrases are not copyrightable. Band names are not copyrightable, yet I’ve seen people temporarily banned and asked to rename their character because it was named after Led Zeppelin. (Sources, please see: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html#band , and additional bullets below this anchor).
Thus, the rule that we can’t reference copyrighted characters is IMPOSSIBLE to break because you can’t legally copyright a character name.
This brings me to the next point, which is Trademark law. From the uspto website, a trademark is defined as “a word, phrase, symbol, or design, or combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.”
A trademark only protects the owners right against infringement on related goods or services. IE, the company Apple has a trademark on the name and logo with regard to software/hardware goods and services. They can’t however claim trademark protection over apple the food, or any business not related to their company. Trademarks are intended to protect business from companies misleading customers by offering a similar product or service in the same field.
There is also the “fair use” defense with regard to Trademarked names. For instance, people can reference Apple the company in articles, blogs, etc.
Due to the above, its clear that even if a name is trademarked, a company cannot sue a player of Guild Wars 2 for a trademark violation for having a character reference said mark, as they are not related products and services. A character named “Apple Computers” is not in the same field/business of the actual company Apple.
The intent of the rules as I understand it is to prevent vulgar and inappropriate names, as well as prevent defamation of character (so no names like Obama Sucks). As written though, I think the rules are overreaching and are leading to many bans on names that would be legally fine.
The slap in the face comes when throughout the game, I see references to real world people and events. It’s very blatant in places, especially in Guild Wars 1 where one of the skill names is “Smooth Criminal”, a song by Michael Jackson with an icon relating to the reference.
Please reconsider the naming policy and reword it in such a way that still prevents libel, slander, and other vulgar content, but allows users to still make creative/witty names and references. Fair use and laws regarding satire should be taken into consideration.
