Evil Captor. Thank you for your answers. You’re excused from jury duty.
By the way, what exactly is your background in the law?
Missed 25th Hour eh?
Unindicted co-conspirator, mostly. BTW, I didn’t notice that I was in a courtroom. I thought this was a public discussion board.
In short, your notion that a legal degree is necessary to comment on the Spike Lee suit is amusingly off-base.
Try again later. Bring pie.
Brilliant use of pie, I must say.
Well hell, time to rip up all the railroads, charge roalities from hair dressers that give a “Spike” hair style, and change the name of a volleyball term just so that uppity retard says he owns the name Spike. But really… should this kind of stupidity really suprise us who live in a country where people get millions for spilling their (GASP!!!) hot coffe in their laps?? This is just a sad ploy for him to get back into the news, and yet another example of why our legal system is a fu#@ing joke. And iI must agree with those before me, the Judge should stop sniffing so much glue, cause he obviously does not have many brain cells left to kill.
I’d most definitely watch that shit…
C’mon, sam. Evil has a point. From the blurb you quoted:
But Spike Lee doesn’t do this, and never has.
If he has an excluse right to ‘Spike’, then does he not also have an excluse right to ‘Lee’? This can get pretty ridiculous.
Now, if someone were to market a CherTV, one might reasonable expect that to feature Cher. Because the name Cher is so closely identified with her and pretty much her alone. Not so with Spike. Until you hear Lee along with it, you do not really think of the director. And in the IMD, there are 6 directors called Spike.
Christ, he’s not even the hottest director with that moniker! Being John Malkovich and Adaptation have generated more buzz than most anything Spike Lee has put out. And better too, IMO, except maybe for He got game.
The coffee in question gave the woman third degree burns on her upper thighs. It was VERY, VERY hot coffee. The woman initially just wanted to be reimbursed for the medical costs of the burn treatments, but the asshole corporation – McDonald’s – refused to do just that and so by the time things got to court, millions were at stake. I know it’s an urban legend among conservatives, but there’s just no truth to the story.
You have to admit, it’s a great way to finance the next Spike Lee movie.
OK, I’ll bite:
[/quote]
“In the age of mass communication, a celebrity can in fact establish a vested right in the use of only their first name or a surname,”
[/quote]
How about the fact that THE GUY’S NAME IS SHELTON!?! To me that reads that he may have a claim to the name ‘Shelton TV’.
If Shelton gets as much as ¢50 in this lawsuit, I’m going to start going by the stage name “Good Morning”. My lawyer and I will sit back and wait for the milions to roll in!
Is British comic Spike Milligan still alive? If so, he had the name WAY before Shelton Lee was born.
I’d say Mr. Milligan should sue the hell out of Shelton, and make him give up the name. Then we’ll see how many people want to watch a “Shelton Lee Joint.”
Alas, no. 
He died last year.
Are you saying Shelton actually calls his films “joints?” Is that supposed to mean they are good enough to smoke?
Joint. You said “movie”. The proper term for a Spike Lee movie is “joint”. Sorry to nitpick, but we don’t want him suing us, do we? 
Every movie he’s ever made, every commercial he’s ever directed, etc., etc. has been under the name Spike Lee. Saying “his name is Shelton” completely misses the point. He has been doing business as Spike Lee, and is widely known by that name. Just like Julius Henry Marx was known as Groucho.
What is real name may happen to be is completely irrelevant. The question is, what do people know him as. And they know the man as Spike Lee. I’m not convinced that his suit will ultimately fly, but that belief is based on my skepticism about his ability to show likelihood of confusion. Not that I think he has no rights because his mama named him Shelton.
Uh, yeah. I actually understand that. But thanks anyway!
Note to self: must use smilies to denote sarcasm.
You mean that he WON’T sue us for using the words “Spike”, “Lee”, and “Joint” together?
Just to be the devil’s advocate, when I first saw a trailer for Spike TV, one of the first thoughts I had was to wonder if Spike Lee was involved. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch for Mr. Lee’s position on the matter, although the remedy could be as simple as a tagline which reads “NOT a Spike Lee joint.” That may even work in the network’s favour…
-FK
How about a disclaimer at the bottom during ads for the channel saying “Not associated with SHELTON Lee”…
For those who enjoy irony, Mark Roesler (no less than a valedictorian of Alexandria Monroe High School) engaged in a legal battle against Shelton “Spike Lee” Jackson and established:
“that Malcolm X’s widow controls the rights to ‘X’ used in association with her husband instead of Lee, director of the movie, Malcolm X”.
It seems that Mr. Jackson (Lee) feels that other people’s monikers belong to him too.