A lot of celebrities have applied for trademark protection for their names or the names of their children. The reason they do this is to prevent people from using their names for commercial or nefarious purposes.
It is not easy to get a trademark for your name unless you are going to use it in business, and unless you can show that your name is so unique that people associate it specifically with you as a personality or celebrity or something like that.
The good thing about trademarking your name, if you can get it, is that it prevents people from profiting by using your name in a nefarious manner. You just sue them for trademark infringement.
So, for example, a lot of those hashtags that are so insulting, demeaning, and toxic towards Meghan might rightfully be asked to be taken down, if she has a trademark for the name MEGHAN MARKLE or MEGHAN DUCHESS OF SUSSEX.
Now, the fact that the latter is a title given to her by a British monarch (and one that can be taken away from her) might be a technicality. Can a person trademark a title of nobility? I am not sure. For example, I read somewhere that "A trademark shall not be registered unless it appears to the registrar that consent has been given by or on behalf of Her Majesty or, as the case may be, the relevant Member of the Royal Family.”
So, the latter is a question mark. Because if it appears that she has received the permission of the sitting monarch, she could trademark the name. But is she likely to get that permission? Probably not. But are there ways around that? Probably. Because even if the title is taken away at some point, she could keep the title as a non-title. What that means is that anybody can call themselves a "duchess." Right? You can call yourself whatever the hell you want, actually. No? And create a business around it. So that even if she is officially de-titled, who is to say she cannot use the title as a parody? As long as she disclaims that she is not really a duchess. Right? I am thinking there are ways to do it. One just has to be creative.
Obviously, she would have to get a good intellectual property lawyer to confirm that, because, I mean, what the hell do I know? But I think it is one way she could look at, protecting some of her reputation online is to think about trademarking her name. As I said in one of my youtube videos, she really needs to look at hiring in-house counsel to take care of some of these things - and at least one of her lawyers needs to be in UK. So, she needs a team of about four lawyers. It is a LOT cheaper than paying hourly wages to attorneys when problems crop up. She really needs to go in-house with her legal needs.
But yea, I think she should think about trademarking her names.
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