A question about 'The'

[valerief]

If two people form a corporation and name their corporation 'The', would anyone wanting to publish anything using the word 'The' need the consent of the corporation 'The'? I mean, suppose they used the word 'The' in a nasty sentence. Might that be libelous?

Are they going to make our words go away, too, with our rights?

[panader0]

1. That depends on what The definition of The is.

[Edweird]

2. I'm no lawyer, but here's what I know (based on owning several construction companies)

'The' would have to the 'The Inc.' or 'The Corp.' or 'The The Corporation'.

Since it is a common word in everyday, I don't think what you are suggesting would fly.

I believe the whole libel/slander issue is more related to trademark than incorporation.

[valerief]

5. Can't persons sue if they're libeled? And isn't a corporation a superperson now? nt

[Edweird]

6. Again, my nonlawyer knowledge is limited, but...

for that to even remotely be plausible, you would have to refer to them as 'the the corporation' or 'the the inc.'. Just 'the' as common as it is, I believe, would make the whole thing impossible.

I don't know squat about libel/slander. Never had a problem with it either way, so I haven't researched it. But I'm fairly certain that you can say all the nasty things in the world about 'Jerry'. However, when you start talking about 'Jerry Seinfeld' you may end up in court. Since 'the' is 'the the corporation', I will speculate that simply using 'the' won't refer to 'the the corporation' in any meaningful way.

Then there's trademark law, which I am also very inexperienced in outside of the music industry. I do know that you could not possibly trademark 'the'. Other posters have provided their own experiences to bolster this.

I do know there are rules about naming corporations. I don't know all of them, I never pushed boundaries with my company names.

The fact that corporations exist on a state level - as opposed to a national level - also complicates things. The state level existence is why trademark keeps getting brought up. You can form '123 inc.' in Florida and someone else can form '123 inc.' in Utah. Trademark is what keeps there from being more than one 'Viacom' or 'Blockbuster' - not the simple act of incorporation.

So, basically, all of this is just a really long way of saying "I find that extremely unlikely".

[valerief]

7. I see. Thanks. I wasn't sure if the SCOTUS ruling changed the status of the names of corps. nt

[Pab Sungenis]

3. The trademark people would never go for it.

I wasn't allowed to trademark "DeMarco Cinemas" because it had too common a last name in it, or "Low-Budget Radio Network" because a Google search turned up references to "Low-Budget Radio" without the word network. I even got a few grumbles about "2,000 Monkeys With Typewriters." They haven't granted the trademark yet, and I have a suspicion they might turn that one down too.

They would never let you trademark "The."

[valerief]

4. No, I wasn't asking about a trademark. I was asking about a corporation named 'The'.

That would now be a person named The. If you published "The dirty pig," would the corporation aka person named The be able to sue you for defamation of character or whatever?

[kudzu22]

8. Not if it's not trademarked