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by slg 2558 days ago
Game of Thrones spoiler ahead:

I am not wild about that name. The Lannisters are the bad guys throughout the run of the GoT story and by later seasons it is revealed that their wealth has mostly wasted away. They are only able to keep up appearances of wealth through taking on large amounts of debt and by looting their enemies. Yes, the single primary characteristic you would assign to the Lannisters is wealth. I am just not sure that is worth associating your product with all their secondary traits like deceit, fraud, selfishness, and ruthlessness.

3 comments

I understand your point. Our goal was to name it after a person, like "Alfred" the productivity app for Mac (https://www.alfredapp.com), but we found that Lannister would be more appropriate as a reference to wealth management. Hope it does not lead you into thinking about the secondary traits.
Maybe it is just the ages of the references, but I think "Alfred" is a more general name that is less associated with the character. But more importantly he doesn't have the negative secondary traits associated with him that completely conflict with how you want people to think of your app. Using Lannister for a wealth management app is almost like naming your nutrition management app after a character with an eating disorder.
Maybe the "Iron Bank" or "Master of Coin" would be more appropriate than this..
What about Mana Musa?
I would also be worried about trademark/copyright issues.
I don't know enough about those laws to know the legal status of this, but that would definitely be a concern for me too. Also the lion iconography rules out any argument that the name isn't 100% GoT inspired.
Copyright is for non-commercial use, IIRC. If you’re not selling anything, it doesn’t apply. Not sure if that’s the case here.
This is simply not true, sadly. Copyright applies regardless of intentions or outcomes; it’s only in certain limited fields that some activities are somewhat exempted (i.e. backups). This is clearly not one of them.
Was referring to this:

https://www.expertlaw.com/library/intellectual_property/fair...

“The less commercial the use, the smaller the portion used, the lesser the import of that portion of the work to the whole, and the lesser the effect on the market for or value of the work, the more likely it will be that fair use doctrine will apply.”

Can you copyright a person's surname (as it was used before GOT)?

Trademark is different.

That I agree. I was just correcting the view of the parent comment, which was wrong on its own.
> If you’re not selling anything, it doesn’t apply.

That's not even remotely true.

Obviously it's so you don't end up like the Lannisters, broke and indebted to the Iron Bank :)