You cannot copyright your name under United States law. Copyright covers original creative works like books, songs, and software, and a personal name does not carry enough creative expression to qualify. If you want legal control over how your name is used, the real tools are federal trademark registration, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, and state right-of-publicity laws.
Why Copyright Does Not Reach Names
Copyright protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible form, such as a manuscript, a recording, or a piece of software.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General The Supreme Court has said a copyrightable work needs at least a “spark” and “modicum” of creativity. A name does not clear that bar.2U.S. Copyright Office. What Is Copyright
The U.S. Copyright Office will not register a name no matter how unusual it is. Its guidance is explicit that individual names, including pseudonyms, pen names, and stage names, are not protected. Business names, product names, character names, book and song titles, slogans, and domain names all sit in the same category. The Office points people toward trademark law instead.3U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 33 – Works Not Protected by Copyright
The practical reason lines up with the legal one. Many people share the same name, and copyright lasts for the author’s life plus seventy years. Locking one person into exclusive rights over “Maria Garcia” or “John Harris” for that long would create obvious problems.
Trademark Is the Right Tool for a Name Used in Business
Trademark law exists to identify the source of goods or services so customers know who stands behind them. The federal definition covers any word, name, symbol, or combination used to distinguish one seller’s offerings from another’s.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1127 – Construction and Definitions Your name qualifies under that language, but only when you actually use it in commerce to brand something.
“Ford” was a surname before it identified an automaker. “Martha Stewart,” “Calvin Klein,” and “Ben & Jerry’s” work the same way: at some point, the public stopped hearing the words as ordinary names and started reading them as signals of who made the product. That shift is what a trademark captures.
The Surname Problem
If your proposed mark is just a last name, the USPTO will likely refuse it as “primarily merely a surname.”5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1052 – Trademarks Registrable on Principal Register The reasoning is that surnames are widely shared, and other people with the same last name should not be blocked from using it in their own businesses without good reason.
You can overcome the refusal by showing “secondary meaning,” which is proof that customers already associate your surname with your specific goods or services rather than treating it as a generic last name. The statute allows the USPTO to accept five years of substantially exclusive and continuous commercial use as evidence of distinctiveness.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1052 – Trademarks Registrable on Principal Register Other useful evidence includes advertising spend, sales figures, media coverage, and consumer surveys.
A first-and-last-name combination, or a surname paired with a distinctive design element, tends to have an easier path because it reads more like a brand than a generic last name. If your surname mark is not yet distinctive enough for the principal register, the USPTO’s supplemental register is an option. It offers weaker protection but keeps your claim on file while recognition builds.
Consent When the Mark Identifies a Living Person
If your trademark includes a name, portrait, or signature that identifies a particular living person, the USPTO requires that person’s written consent before it will register the mark.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1052 – Trademarks Registrable on Principal Register This applies even when you are the person in question. Expect an office action asking you to confirm the name identifies you and to submit a signed consent. The same rule reaches nicknames, stage names, and pseudonyms when they are recognizably tied to someone in the relevant field.6USPTO. Name or Likeness of a Particular Living Individual in a Mark
Rights You Get Without Filing Anything
You do not need to file with the USPTO to have any trademark rights at all. Simply using a name as a brand in commerce creates common law rights inside the geographic area where your customers know you. A neighborhood bakery operating under a family surname for decades has real rights in its local market without ever seeing a federal certificate.
The limit is geography. Common law protection stops at the edge of your actual reputation. If someone else federally registers a similar mark, your rights get frozen to your existing territory while the registrant takes the rest of the country. Federal registration is worth pursuing whenever your business reaches beyond a single area, because filing gives you nationwide priority as of the filing date.
What Filing Costs and What You Have to Do Later
The USPTO’s base application fee is $350 per class of goods or services.7USPTO. Summary of 2025 Trademark Fee Changes A class is a category of products or services the mark covers. If you use your name for a clothing line and a podcast, those are two classes and two fees. Attorney fees vary; they often start around $500 and climb with the complexity of the application.
Registration does not maintain itself. You must file a declaration of continued use between the fifth and sixth years after registration. Between the ninth and tenth years, you file both a declaration of use and a renewal application. Renewals repeat every ten years after that. Miss a deadline and the registration is canceled. A six-month grace period exists for late filings, but it comes with an added fee.8USPTO. Keeping Your Registration Alive
When Someone Grabs Your Name as a Domain
Registering a domain matching someone else’s name and trying to sell it back is cybersquatting. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act lets a trademark owner, including a person whose name is protected as a mark, sue a registrant who acts with bad faith intent to profit.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1125 – False Designations of Origin
Courts weigh several factors when judging bad faith. They look at whether the registrant has any legitimate intellectual property interest in the domain, whether the domain is the registrant’s own legal name, whether the registrant ever used it for a real business, and whether they offered to sell it for a windfall. A pattern of registering domains matching other people’s trademarks is strong evidence of bad faith.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1125 – False Designations of Origin
There is a real limit here. The ACPA protects personal names only when the name is “protected as a mark.” If you have never used your name commercially and have no trademark rights, the claim is much harder to bring. Building trademark rights before a dispute arises is far easier than trying to assemble them in the middle of one. Outside federal court, an administrative complaint under ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy is faster and cheaper, but it is limited to clear cases of abusive registration. Social media usernames sit outside all of this and are governed by each platform’s terms of service.
The Right of Publicity Is a Separate Claim
The right of publicity protects your control over the commercial use of your identity, including your name, image, voice, and likeness. If a company uses your name to imply an endorsement or to sell a product, this is the claim you would bring, and it is distinct from both copyright and trademark.
There is no federal right of publicity statute. Everything comes from state law, and the rules vary widely. Most states recognize the right through statute, common law, or both, but they disagree on whether the right survives death and for how long. Some states extend post-mortem protection for forty to seventy years. Others provide none.
The Supreme Court addressed this area in Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., holding that a television station could not broadcast a performer’s entire act without consent because doing so threatened his ability to earn a living from it. The Court recognized that states have a legitimate interest in protecting the economic value of a person’s identity and performance.10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977)
Trademark protects the brand and the consumer’s ability to identify who made a product. The right of publicity protects you personally from having your identity exploited for someone else’s gain. The two overlap when a name functions as both a personal identifier and a commercial brand, which is common for anyone with a public career.
Matching the Protection to Your Situation
The right approach depends on what you are actually trying to prevent.
- To brand a product or service under your name, file a federal trademark application with the USPTO. Budget at least $350 per class in filing fees, plus attorney costs if you hire one. For a bare surname, plan to show secondary meaning or start on the supplemental register.
- If someone is using your name to sell products or imply your endorsement, look at your state’s right of publicity law. A claim may be available even without a registered trademark.
- If someone registered a domain matching your name to resell it, the ACPA and the UDRP are the two routes, but both work best when you already hold trademark rights in the name.
- If you want to stop someone from writing about you or saying your name, no area of intellectual property law provides that power. Copyright, trademark, and publicity rights all have limits, and none prevent ordinary reference to you in speech, journalism, commentary, or daily life.
Copyright is not the answer for a name, and it never has been. Trademark is the strongest and most flexible tool available, though it demands real commercial use and steady maintenance. For anyone whose income depends on a public identity, combining trademark registration with awareness of state publicity rights and domain-name law gives the fullest coverage the current legal system offers.