Originally published at: Boy named after Star Wars character denied passport - Boing Boing
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How long do Norse god’s copyrights last?
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I think it’s odd that the someone in the passport office feels it’s down to them to enforce copyright protections.
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Especially when it would have to be a trademark issue, not copyright.
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True!
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Lord knows how many passports for a Mickey have been refused!
Some jobsworth fuckwit in the Passport Office has hopefully been given a stern talking to!
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The UK home office said it was denied due to a “trademark or copyright” issue. It is only the bad reporting that has incorrectly changed it to “copyright”.
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Between the lines: the officer wanted to punish the parents for being nerds and know-it-alled their way to an ntellectual property rationale they didn’t understand. Which is why it was processed as soon as a journalist turned a light on it.
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I know the US is pretty notoriously unregulated when it comes to what you can name your children. Do names in the UK have to be approved by anyone? I know some countries are pretty strict about it, but a name like that would generally be rejected when applying for a birth certificate, not 7 years later. So I think you’re right about why this happened.
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The legislation does not set out any guidance on what
parents may name their child.Our advice to registrars is that a name should consist of a sequence of
letters and that it should not be offensive.The reason for limiting the
registration of names to a sequence of letters is that a name which
includes a string of numbers or symbols etc. has no intrinsic sense of
being a name, however the suffix ‘II’ or ‘III’ would be allowed.The only restriction on the length of a name is that it must be able to fit
in the space provided on the registration page.
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The UK was always “famous” for not having any restrictions on names, but they did prohibit offense words, fraudulent titles and database ticklers like weird unicode characters.
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Ok. So we probably inherited that approach from you, like we did with most of our legal systems. Good to know. Thanks! And thanks to @anon33176345 .
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Controversies I vaguely remember are all things like “they banned me from calling my child Hitler Lucifer” or whatever and it was really about the bureacrat getting upset.
The classic mistake is to think the English make laws or rules to be systematically enforced. They make them to enable discretionary prosecution.
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Also, obligs…
ETA:
Yes, we inherited that approach to the law from you as well. I say we blame England for everything! (jk)
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Yep you can blame us for her too
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It’s obviously not any of those things — children are neither businesses nor publications, and they’re not in competition with Disney 
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This is without a doubt due to an employee at the Home Office who thought they knew what they were talking about and did not.
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What a classic Jobsworth
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Maybe they were afraid people would confuse him with the real Luke Skywalker. /s
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The Empire strikes back?
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