I thought I was buying the greatest hits of my favorite band from when I was in sixth grade, in a new grainy format, but it turned out to just be oats and puns. Deceptive.
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Not if you talk proper, like what I do. All enunciation and shit.
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Or Fleetwood Mac.
Just like how Volkwagen sued the Beatles* for trademark infringement back in 1960!
*OK, actually they didn't because that would be stupid.
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best
Not true! When I was 7 i thought Haulinā Oats was the band name!!
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weāre talking about musiciansā¦ 
How is the band harmed? Nobody who wants music is going to accidentally buy granola, and vice versa.
Well maybe they were about to launch their new line of healthy trail snacks! Didja ever think of that? Hmmm? I thought not!
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If they have a right to sue or not, they have gained some publicity from this. Really, when was the last time anyone has even heard mention of Hall & Oats?
Interior, Anytown, U.S.A. High School Battle of the Bands.
Band Member in mediocre high school band: āI eat Haulinā Oats for breakfastā
Offstage, hiddden. [whispers to self]: āHall & Oates must suck much more than I ever thought. I shall RTā
Damage. Done.
side note: IANAL but It seems like it should come into play that their names were already common words. Can you really expect to hog those words? As a person with a common adjective for a surname, I have to say, Iād just let it go, and kick myself for not choosing something a bit more unique to trademarkā¦
Yeah, I hear Barry White is suing the fuck out of nearly everything.
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Actually, Daryl Hall has a web series called āLive From Darylās Houseā featuring a ton of popular musicians - dude is an extremely well respected musician, apparently (and if those ācelebrity net worthā websites are accurate, both he and John Oates are worth $30 million each, so I imagine all those āclassic hitsā stations are giving them a lot of air play).
As @ChickieD noted upthread, there was a quite good cover album by The Bird & The Bee that came outā¦ jesus, over four years ago already.
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Many moons ago, when Anna Nicole Smith had recently died and there were several men claiming to be the babyās dad (and therefore, had claims to the millions she had won from her marriage to a very rich pervy old geezer and subsequent lawsuit against his family that went up to the supreme court), I decided that Iād cash in by printing up T-shirts saying āIām the real daddy of Anna Nicole Smithās babyā and my friend had a viral e-mail campaign all designed where you could send postcards to friends claiming you were the real baby dad.
Anyhoo, the one-off T-shirt printing place I wanted to use killed my dreams of instant wealth by refusing to print the shirts, claiming copyright issues. I researched it and one thing that is really set in case law is that a celebrity has almost total control over their own name. There have been a ton of pretty ridiculous cases out there where people used celebrities names satirically and all of them were in favor of the celebrity. Sadly.
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Iām sure the law does a lot of bizarre things to protect celebrities, but in this case Haulinā Oats used neither āHallā nor āOatesā, so they canāt really claim they are abusing their names. Which makes me think they have to go back to the trademark issue, which just doesnāt scan.
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I think itād fall under Personality Rights law:
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