What Do Lennon Murphy, John Lennon and Yoko Ono All Have in Common?
According to the band's website, their record label Arista Records addressed the issue of Yoko Ono potentially having a problem with the name. According to Lennon, for whom the band is named, the band's product manager approached Yoko Ono to make her aware of the band's use of the name.
"...evidently giving her blessing as Arista proceeded forward with the album release and at the same time filing for the trademark," Lennon said, according to her site.
In 2003 the band was granted the trademark by the United States Patent and Trademark office for musical use.
Just days before the statue of limitations was up the band were accused of "falsely representing myself and causing confusion in the market place that has damaged the John Lennon name," Lennon said.
As a veteran of the local music scene here in Omaha, Nebraska, I have played in more than my fair share of bands. Choosing a name for the various projects has always been tremendously difficult.
There are so many different things to take into consideration, legal ramifications being only one aspect. You also have to consider whether or not it is catchy, what it describes and if people will be able to remember it.
On more than one occasion I have had to scrap a perfectly good band name because it has already been taken. At first it was simply a trial and error process. We would pick a band name and that was that. Days or weeks later though, we might receive and email or a Myspace message telling us that another band had already taken the name.
In my most recent musical project, Right Side Impact, we took a different approach to choosing a name. We each went home after practice one night and came up with a list of names that we thought would be good, and then brought the list to practice the next time we met.
The name itself actually was chosen through an anonymous vote by everyone in the band. We each chose five names that we were particularly fond of and ranked them. We then tallied it all up and Right Side Impact was the definite winner.
Because of the short life of most local bands, most of the bands I have played in have never trademarked or copyrighted and of our band names. It just never seemed like it was that important. In the last band however, we decided to register it with an online band name database. That way if there were any disputes over who had the name it would be easy to show that we had registered it first.
Sources:
Lennon
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Lennon: Damaged Goods
Published by Steve C
I recently graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communication. Currently I am purusing my Master's degree in Communication and teaching Speech courses at UN... View profile
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3 Comments
Post a CommentGreat article! My son is thinking of getting a band together eventually....I will advise him about registering their name online when the time comes!
I think your online registration idea was a good one...you never know when you might need it. There are many Lennons in the world...John probably the most famous, but not the only one. Interesting article.
Interesting take! I'd never heard of "Lennon Murphy" until this hoopla. I disagree with Yoko in that Lennon is just too commonly used to be banned from band names, but I'm not running the music industry. The names Yoko or Ono are much more unusual. But Lennon is not the exclusive trade-mark of his widow. Well written & interesting article!