Sylvia Browne
March 5, 2008 – 8:43 pm
A man named Robert Lancaster created a site called Stop Sylvia Brown, which makes a case for Sylvia not being a “true psychic medium”.
Whether she is or not, Mr. Lancaster has every right to express his opinion. Sylvia and her lawyers disagreed. They demanded that she stop using her trademark, which showed their lack of knowledge about the law. Trademarks don’t exist so you can stop anyone from using your name — they exist so that people don’t confuse you or your product with another one. For example, if I wanted to say “Coke is awful”, I’m free to do so. However, I can’t create a new beverage and call it “Coke”, as that would be a trademark violation.
As TechDirt put it: “In the meantime, I had not previously been aware of a site criticizing the supposed psychic — but, thanks to her lawyer’s attempt to shut it down, a lot more people know about. You would have thought a psychic would have recognized that such a plan would backfire.”
