Owning Everything

ANYBODY WHO IS a fan of rock roll'll tell ya; if you don't like Eddie Van Halen, you don't like to rock hard. He and his brothers have done pretty well with it, tens of millions of dollars later. But now there is a slight chink in the armor of the Van Helan name, or empire, or financial juggernaut, whichever. To wit; Eddie's brother Alex, the drummer, got a divorce a while back, and his ex wife is engaged in all kindsa businesses, just like the rest of us, clothing, furniture, household accessories, ladies accoutrementa, or some such. She is calling her sundry business interests "Van Halen" this, and "Van Halen" that, and this has the boyz pissed, pissed enough to lawyer up and make a federal case out of it. Eddie and Alex feel that the ex wife is riding their coat tails, using "their" name to proift, stealing their thunder, imitating them...you get the point. Turns out the brothers have all sortsa business enterprises their own selves, and some of it, evidently, runs parallel to those of lady Van Halen. Furniture, or something, if memory serves. According to the Supreme Court of these United States anybody is perfectly free to use their rightful name to market anything they want, so long as they do it honestly, reasonably, harmlessly, you know, the usual high @ mighty sounding supreme court talk.... Now, first, may the dear lord bless and keep Eddie and Alex and all their success and businesses, more power to them, congrats, boyz. But a lady named Van Halen using her name, and getting bludgeoned because of it? Hmmm...it would seem the Van Halen men must prove in court to the satisfaction of a judge or jury that the use of the name Van Halen for promotion by someone else named Van Halen is harmful to their Van Halenhood, and businesses according to prevailing legal theory. That might be a heavy lift. After all, who's to say that Alex's ex wife isn't in fact HELPING her former family mates by making use of their name-become her name? Who's to say.....do you ever get the impression that in our beloved highly capitalistic profit oriented American society we sometimes get a little bit too fired up about property rights, that we as a culture might be just a shade insanely propietary? The thought crossed my mind as I nearly bumped into my neighbor's privacy fence on my way to find a way to leave my house by only setting foor on my property or publlic property. Heaven forbid that I should set foot upon someone's private domain in America. Its so hard to do; hell, damned near every bit of property in this country (U.S.A.) is private, and not to be tresspassed upon. Cut across someone's lawn, get a bullet in your head, probably fired from a weapon owned by a good conservative capitalistic propietary christian with strong ties to the National Rifle Association. This is true of land, money, intellectual property; you name it, somebody owns it, exclusively, and aims to keep it that way, one way or another, in court, or at the business end of of an automatic. Frankly, you almost hope that the ex missus alex van halen wins the lawsuit which is attacking her. Otherwise, I might start looking over my shoulder every time I find myself whistling "And the Cradle Will Rock", or wondering if my hairstyle too closely resembles that of somebody who happens to own the style for marketing purposes, with a trademark to prove it.