I’d also recommend against buying Best of the Beatles.
Not a “best of The Beatles”, but rather a collection of recordings by Pete Best, the former Beatle drummer.
Also, the sequel to Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury - Fist of Fury II - stars Bruce Li.
for what I’m reading, in the United States the Lanham act **does **allow you to trademark your name, as long as it follows certain criteria (your name needs to be the source indicator of determined goods and services, like Stephen King is identified as the source of Stephen King novels, and is distinctive enough that people identifies your product and the brand name)
Of course the fake Stephen King may very well live in a country with more lax laws, but if you want to trademark your name, you can.
Clancy was doing it while still very much alive. I still remember starting the first ‘Op Centre’ and thinking WTF in the first few pages. Looking on the cover to see the apostrophe. Tom Clancy’s. :mad:
If you’re a fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, who co write books as Preston & Child, beware of a series of ebooks from a guy calling himself Preston Child. He even names his books so they sound like entries from their series. Jackass.
As my lawyer, Saul Goodman, informed me.
Sometimes it’s a good thing. Jill Soubule wrote a song called I Kissed A Girl, and managed to make a decent living from confused Katy Perry fans.
I’m pretty sure this is wrong as you’ve stated it: “Apple” is trademarkable, but trademarks are only valid within a specific field of endeavor, so two companies named “Apple” can coexist as long as they stick to their respective fields. Apple Computers was sued by Apple Corps (the record company, owner of Apple Records) and the outcome of that trial was that Apple Computer had to pay Apple Corps damages and each company was told/reminded to stay out of the other company’s field. This was reinforced after a 1991 lawsuit, wherein Apple Computer included music files in their Macs and Apple Corps sued, and Apple Computer had to agree that it wouldn’t sell music on physical media.
Apple Computer actually won the trademark lawsuit Apple Corps launched in the wake of iTunes, but the final settlement involved Apple Inc buying Apple Corps’ trademark rights and Apple Corps allowing the Beatles’ music to be sold on iTunes.
Funny coincidence - Saul Goodman actually did “write” a book*.
*It’s actually not out yet but being released April 5. That link is for an audiobook, not sure if they’re releasing a read-only version too. And of course it’s written by someone else, but the Walmart listing for it lists “Goodman, Saul” as a co-author.
If the names can’t be copyrighted, then new authors like this new Stephen King have a good start 
Wow, the OP sure said it. Four sentences in I decided it was the worst short story I’d ever read.
Sometimes these things work out well.
I was searching for unread humor by Christopher Moore. I was getting discouraged. It seemed I read his work faster than he produced it.
Then I saw a title I hadn’t read. Yeah!! I bought it and immediately realized I’d fucked up. I had purchased the work of Christopher G. Moore, a Canadian ex-pat living and writing in Thailand.
But I read the book anyway. Then I read his other 24 works of fiction. Along the way he responded to a review I wrote, leading to a few back and forth emails.
Ranking authors I’ve read to date I would put Christopher G. Moore way abover Christopher Moore.
Glad yours worked out for you but let me tell ya, Stephen King is no Christopher G. Moore.
Ignoring non-relevant stuff like logos, etc., the USPTO phrase is “goods and services” rather than “field of endeavor”. Assuming Stephen King isn’t providing a service of some sort, that leaves goods. So, a trademark would be for Stephen King <product(s)>, where <product(s)> would be an item or category of items.
Speaking of logos, one of the confounding issues in Apple vs. Apple was both used an apple logo. (Ah, remember the cut apple logo on the label of Apple records?)
I hope you’ll check out my own new e-book on Amazon, The Two Gentlemen of Bakersfield by William Shakespeare.
Although to be fair, Sobule was very forward-looking and managed to release her song 13 years before Katy Perry decided to release a song along the same themes.
I saw her in concert with John Doe of X, and she introduced her hit by thanking the confused Katy Perry fans.
Aha! I saw her sometime around 2010/2011… she said something about it before playing the song, but I didn’t know the background.
I much more like her “A Good Life”, the only song I know of that has worked The Day the Earth Stood Still into the lyrics… I should see if she’s playing around here anytime soon. It was good seeing her play.
This sort of thing makes looking for books in the kindle store a chore. I have made it a policy to get the free sample before buying books to make sure I am not getting crap because I failed to read the small print to find out if the book is luring me in under not quite legally actionable false pretenses. To be fair the a big part of the need for this policy is because I purchased The Bourne Ultimatum without reading the first few pages. Man is that some crappy writing.
Cantaloupe-Legged Man just doesn’t carry the same aura of menace as Pennywise or Christine.