"Katsuni" at the AEE in Las Vegas (January 2007)
Earlier this year, the popular Eurasian adult model Katsumi suddenly announced that she was changing her stage name to Katsuni. At the time, the change was rather puzzling, especially to American audiences. Katsumi wrote this short blurb on her official website:
"C'est officiel! Katsumi change une lettre pour devenir KATSUNI. Une demoiselle portant le même nom a exprimé le souhait que l'actrice effectue un changement. Et oui! pas facile de porter le nom d'une pornostar! Alors n'oubliez pas! désormais ce sera VIVA KATSUNI !!"
At the time, I thought the name "Katsumi" might infringe on someone's trademark although it seemed rather odd since "Katsumi" is a real name in Japanese. Interestingly, on at least one website (aboutnames.ch), Katsumi is listed as Japanese name for males, meaning "self control" and to "win". Aboutnames goes to expressly warn that the name shouldn't be confused with "Kasumi" which means "the mist" or "the fog." I wondered if this was the Katsumi changed it. Perhaps she made a mistake with it from the beginning? However, on another site (2000-names.com), Katsumi is listed as a Female Japanese name meaning "victorious beauty." Her newly chosen name, Katsuni was not a recognized known name.
This week, more facts surrounding the dispute came to light. From an AVN article earlier this week:
BARCELONA – Digital Playground performer Katsumi has been forced to permanently change her stage name to Katsuni, after a year-long trial in France found that the exotic French-Vietnamese beauty’s name was too close to that of Mary Katsumi, a French communications advisor.
"The main reason is a problem of morality," Katsuni told AVN. "Mary Katsumi complained against me because my name and reputation was a problem."
Katsuni had appealed the French court's decision in January and lost the case Sept. 27.
“I had no choice but to accept a change of name," she said. "I didn't really communicate it to the United States [while the appeal was in progress], but now I don't really have the choice.”
According to Katsuni, the French court ruling allows Mary Katsumi to ask for financial compensation every time the porn performer is identified with her previous moniker. ***
Katsuni wrote about her ordeal in a passionate entry on her MySpace blog:
In November I found in my mail-box , a letter written by a lawyer who was defending the interests of a young woman called Miss Katsumi and who was ordering me to stop to use my stagename « Katsumi » IMME DIATLY . I won't lie to you. I was absolutly surprised and chocked. I didn't know that a japanese firstname, because it was rare in France and because an unknown woman in France owned it as a lastname, gave her the right to take it from me! Just write « Katsumi » on google and you will see millions of websites where Katsumi ca be sometimes an anime hero, a famous sumo,or a painter for exemple ; you will also find many dictionnaries of japanese firstnames where we can see that it's a common firstname for boy and girls!
However this is against me that this young lady complained. Why? The fact that she's compared or assimilated to a famous pornostar causes important damages to her life: she failed when she looks for a job,( but never showed up any letters from an employer who certified that it was because of her name..which would have been a kind of discrimation anyway), she had to put her name on red list (strange isn't it, when we know that it wasn't herself but her father who was in the white pages!), and of course she was victim of some unpleasant remarks and daily insults...(I still take the subway and in 7 years I've never been insulted in the street). In brief, you probably understood well : if it's obvious that it must be embarrassing to carry the same name than a pornostar, the reasons of her complaint have been far to be proved. However, even if I was quite surprised and indignant, I felt some commiseration for this girl , an ex- scout, desperate because of the unfair bad words that she seemed to be the victim.
Unfortunatly the judge who pronunciated his verdict on January 10th 2007 , had all the commiseration for her. While it was proven that I was practising my activity as an porn actress since 2001 that since I've started I was communicating on this pseudonym which was nothing else than a common firstname in Japan, while it was also shown that my career took an international largeness, that I was under contract in the United States and that I had stopped my career in France as an actress in order to develop my restructuring through my TV show on TPS Star, my tours of feature dancing, my new activity as a producer...and as a journalist....while I had expressed the will to protect my name by depositing it as a trademark to not have any problems of competition , the judge decided that I had to stop to use it. I know, for many people it seems trivial and for many of them to be an adult performer is even not a real job. ... ***
You must understand something. In our job and for anybody else who is an artist, this is your name which makes your work. Talent is the start and this is talent wich will make you last, but without any fame you're nobody and if you're nobody you still can sing in karaokes.What about me? What do I have left without my stagename? A pretty face? My pseudonym is a trademark, a quality guarantee ; write it on a boxcover, you will sell 3 times more.This is not me who's telling that...but an american producer who was telling me it already 3 years ago : « Your name make our movies sell. It's a chance for us to have you in our scenes! » Today I don't have the right anymore to use this name. In order to tranquilize things we found a deal : to not have any confusion anymore between the porno actress and the young parisian , a letter will be changed. The actress will be called « KATSUNI ». The difference is so subtle that it is absurd, but what do you want? It was the price of the peace....a peace which was supposed to start on April 19th 2007, date when both parties fell agree for this new stagename. So, my heart quite sad , I started immediatly to communicate on this new stagename which seemed to me so foreign. Yes « Katsuni », it's almost like « Katsumi », that's cute. But the fact is that it's a greek name and there's no link anymore with my asian backgrounds! And believe me , when you've carried a name for 9 years ( I was using it when I was a stripper), when even your friends call you like that, believe me, this name has something more than just a commercial value. I had to accept the Justice. Porn is dirty and it splashed an « illustre inconnue « . (« famous unknown »). ***
I'm truly at a loss to understand this legal result. As stated before, Katsumi is a common Japanese name. That fact alone should have been reason to toss this case out in my view. In effect, by barring "Katsuni" the right to use the stage name "Katsumi", private citizen Mary Katsumi has been granted trademark-like protection on her name. But trademarks were intended to protect distinctive marks that are used in (commercial) commerce. The general idea is to grant exclusive use of the mark to help avert potential market confusion in the minds of consumers. Ironically, the porn star Katsumi is the party in this dispute with a legitimate need to protect her name. She should have trademarked her stage name long ago!
Applying trademark type protection to a private citizen's last name in order to shield her from the remote possibility of harm due to confusion with a similarly named porn star is absurd. This result turns intellectual property law upside down. Plus, besides the bad public policy concerns, the damage claims of Mary Katsumi are highly dubious. Who really would confuse a porn star with a regular citizen on the sole basis of a partially shared name?
When the law evaluates this sort of thing, the standard frequently applied is what a fictional reasonable person would do, not an unreasonable person. From what I understand of the case, it appears that Mary Katsumi alleged sharing the Katsumi name was interfering with essential life activities and causing her a great deal of emotional distress. According to porn star Katsumi's blog, she complained of difficulty getting jobs and general harassment on a daily basis in public.
Frankly, I do not understand why the plaintiff here would be the subjected to daily unpleasant remarks and insults. It seems to me that strangers on the street or subway would not know her name. There would no reason to attack her. And people who already knew Mary Katsumi would know she is not the porn star. If they taunted her about her shared name, that is immature and silly, not the actions of the "reasonable man." So that leaves brand new people in her life that she introduces herself to such as new acquaintances or employers. In my opinion, any employer who eliminated Mary Katsumi for consideration of a job solely on the basis of her shared last name is not acting reasonable. It would seem to require that the potential employer also assuming all the details about her background and prior work history were made up. I also find it unlikely that other new acquaintances, even if they were to recognize "Katsumi" is the name of a popular Asian starlet would immediately assume it is the same person and immediately begin to ridicule her. In my experience, this is not the way most adult entertainment fans act when meeting a star and I am sure porn star Katsumi could truthfully testify to the same thing.
This ruling would seem to open to the door for nearly anyone who shares even part of their name with an adult performer. Would the French court permit all people with the name "Jenna" to proceed with a lawsuit based on a similar legal theory? Would someone with the last name "Butts" have a cause of action against Seymore now too? Or what if your real name was "Ginger Lynn" or "Amber Lynn", that would seem to be even more problematic if we adopt the reasoning of the French judiciary. The slippery slope problem might be even worse. Why stop with adult performers? The notion of a harmful shared name could apply to nearly any group of "outsiders" or even product brands that may be a target of occasional derision by random members of the public.
Earlier today, a forum member posted the following comments with regard to the murder charges in the Brian Surewood case.
By the time this comes to trial I don't think murder will still be a charge. What seems more appropriate is Vehicular Manslaughter, three counts of reckless driving involving road rage. Surewood also faces three counts of leaving the scene of an accident. I think he still will get 10-15 years. The murder charge will be hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt because the state will have to prove intent. Both drivers deserve some hard time not less than 15 years.
It is not correct that the state has to prove intent in a situation like this. A murder charge in the Surewood case is sustainable under the "deprived heart" (aka "black heart") theory of murder. Under the deprived indifference theory of murder (also known as "black heart" or "depraved heart"), the defendant willfully engaged in outrageously reckless conduct with deprived indifference for human life. In this instance, the intent element is satisfied because the defendant knew, or should of known, such behavior could result in death or seriously bodily harm.
It is somewhat eerie that my Criminal Law in a Nutshell handy reference gives the following example for black heart murder: "a motorist drives through the center of a large city at rush hour at 80 mph." Does that sound familiar? Other examples would be a workman who tosses a brick from the top of a tall building when there are crowds of people standing below or a gang member who does a random drive by shooting at the exterior of a home, but winds up killing an elderly lady knitting in her recliner chair on the inside.
As I previously alluded in my earlier post, "the most significant problems in this area are the degree of outrageousness necessary to render one's heart "deprived" and the extent to which objectivity vis-a-vis subjectivity is determinative of the question." Thus, it becomes critical to determine what Surewood and Ayon were doing before the accident, and witness testimony will be key here.
Also, in many jurisdictions, a murder charge could also be sustained under the "Felony Murder Rule." Under the Felony Murder Rule, a death resulting from the commission of a felony is a murder. Most states limit the application of this doctrine to "dangerous felonies" or "foreseeable" deaths. In California, the Penal code states the felony must be "inherently dangerous." Some examples include arson, rape, carjacking, robbery, burglary, mayhem, kidnapping and "all other dangerous felonies." What is and what is not a "inherently dangerous" felony has been the subject of much litigation in California.
At this time, I am unsure whether or not Surewood could be charged under Felony Murder in California. I suspect the answer the yes, but I would need to know more about the specific felonies he committed and how prior case law has handled them in the context of the felony murder rule. For instance, is "road rage" a felony in California? If so, has the court considered it "inherently dangerous?"
-- Snowman
P.S. -- If you are in the adult industry and need assistance with trademark issues, please feel free to contact me! At a minimum, production studios should strongly consider registering their company name, fictional characters, and popular series titles. Serious starlets (and even male talent) are also advised to protect their valuable stage name.
I think there's a law that you don't have to pay taxes if the company paid you less than a certain amount. Not sure what that is, though."
Recent Comments