There’s a band called Interpol now, and it made me wonder this… Are there any laws against naming a band after a US government organization? Or would they have no problems calling themselves The FBI?
A cursory search on Amazon reveals such band names as Redhead Kingpin and the F.B.I., C.I.A., and I.R.S.
There is (or used to be) also a record label called IRS, and their logo is a guy in a fedora wearing shades.
That sounds just like me. 
OTOH, Chicago was originally “The Chicago Transit Authority”, and the actual public transportation agency for the city of Chicago threatened to sue them if they didn’t change their name. I think YMMV if you name yourself for a government organization - I wonder if calling yourself “The Central Intelligence Agency” instead of “The CIA” would draw you some sort of cease and desist order from some government lawyers. It seems to me that a civil suit would have to be based on a possible confusion that the band was in some way affiliated with the government agency, which seems ridiculous on the face of it, but when we’re talking about an organization that can conceive of an operation involving exploding cigars for Castro, anything is possible.
**IRS Records ** was started by one the brothers of drummer Stewart Copeland, who was of course in a band called The Police.
A third brother had a talent agency called FBI.
Their father had been a jazz musician, a *National Review * columnist, and a CIA operative.
Sadly, the record label that helped shepherd a young R.E.M. closed down in the mid-1990s.
In a related note… S.O.S pads are NOT S.O.S. pads (third period). I beleive the reason was simply because it could not be the same as the Distress call. Drawing from this, I doubt any actual branded item (Not a service) could cary the above names. (My information came from that ‘other’ Book Series of questions)
And hearing stories of the bands that were on IRS, this was a Good Thing.
Really? Well, don’t be stingy with the juicy stories!
You can call a band any name you want. It’s just whether or not the poeple that own the copyright or trademark don’t like it.
My favorite (sort of) example of this is a band called Brad. They used to have a pretty cool band name (I forget it now) and tried to copyright it. They found out that some guy owned the right to that band name and asked him if they could use it. He wasn’t even currently in a band at all, but he still denied them usage of that name. So, those clever bastards decided to steal his name, and named the band Brad. Pretty cool huh?
The laws governing music, band names/song titles, usage rights, copyrighting, etc. are very complex. You’d be hard pressed to find any single source that can answer every question one might have regarding these matters.