I stole a name (and I liked it): Katy Perry and Greece versus Katie Perry and Macedonia.

I love Katie Perry – that is - the clothing brand. Their ´Adelaide´ pants are wonderful if you are blessed with nice curves. Comfortable and feminine and still manage to look stylish – you can feel like you are lounging around in trackies yet still have people comment on how great you look. No, I am not writing an infomercial in the hope that Katie will send me a gift certificate – I just found it odd that a brand that I identify with was subject to a threat to its identity. I thought you had to be Macedonian to have that happen to you. The brand ´Katie Perry´ unlike many ´named´ clothing brands is actually named after the designer, Katie Perry, who has also been Katie Perry since birth. The problem that Katie Perry has is that someone else is trying to steal her name.

Katie is an individual designer with an established self-created brand, able to stand up in the face of large corporate managed brands and produce and sell high quality Australian clothes. So many individual designers can´t make a business out of their passion; it is great to see someone doing it. Having carved out a position for herself in Australian fashion retailing, you´d think she´d have no problems maintaining her brand that she has worked so hard for.

Enter Katy Perry. You know her from her 2008 song ´I kissed a girl (and I liked it)´ and the song ´UR So Gay (but you don´t even like boys)´ – yeah that is her. You don´t have to be a journalist to know that provocative titles can spice up average work, and I think it works for Katy in her pop-music as well. It turns out that this Katy that exploits homosexuality for her music, last week sent ´cease and desist´ letters, via the legal firm Fisher Adams Kelly here in Brisbane, to Katie Perry, the designer, to stop marketing her products under her own (the designer´s) name.

To which my first response was ´Huh?´ It makes about as much sense as if Burger King, in the 1980s, sent letters to NBA basketballer Bernard King telling him to stop playing basketball for the New York Knicks. OK yes Katy and Katie are homophonic (and no Katy, homophonic has nothing to do with gay – so don´t bother writing a song about it) but people with eyes can tell the difference. It boils down to two women fighting over a name – or the degree of similarity between two names. Can one person monopolize a name? If they can, how do we know who has the right to use that name? This is where it gets interesting.

Katy Perry only became ´Katy Perry´ in 2002. Before that she was Katheryn Hudson.

She was a born-again Christian with a Portuguese mother and a Californian father who did poorly singing gospel songs and the decided to become a rather average artist who exploits bi-curiosity in otherwise rather average music. She is still Katheryn Hudson – she just wants another name that sounds better than her own to use on stage and which isn´t too similar to the actress Kate Hudson. But now Katheryn Hudson not only wants to also be Katy Perry – she also wants to be the only famous Katy (or Katie) Perry.

Where does Greece and Macedonia fit into this fashion trademark conflict? While Katheryn Hudson and Katie Perry are fighting over the name ´Katie or Katy Perry´, Greece and Macedonia have been involved in a similar battle over the name ´Macedonia´. The facts are similar. Both Greece and Katheryn Hudson are known by different legal names than the one they claim ownership of. Both Macedonia and Katie Perry were using their names before Greece and Katheryn Hudson decided to adopt or use similar names. In both instances the names are being used for different reasons. Katy is for a singer, Katie is for a fashion designer, Macedonia in Greece is for a ministry (state or prefecture) and Macedonia in Macedonia is the name of a country.

Being Macedonian, I can feel her pain. My country and its land has been called Macedonia for thousands of years. Nobody bothered with the name until it was likely that we would finally become an independent nation. This upset Macedonia´s southern neighbor, Greece, who were still busy denying they had a Macedonian minority and had stolen Macedonian land. What did Greece do? In 1988 Greece changed the name of one of their ministries to Macedonia (it was previously Northern Greece). They then stated ´We are the Macedonians and nobody else is´. The Greek government tried to stop Macedonia´s independence; they took out full-page articles in most major world newspapers stating that only they are Macedonians; and when whining to the rest of the world not to diplomatically recognize Macedonia failed, in February 1994 they blockaded Macedonia until they were taken to court. Like Greece with the name ´Macedonia´, Katheryn Hudson wants exclusive use of the name ´Katy (or Katie) Perry´. Greece and Katheryn Hudson both have perfectly acceptable names already which they aren´t giving up – but they both insist on exclusive ownership of names of other people. People who were born with those names and identities don´t have the luxury of other names. Maybe Katheryn Hudson will follow Greece´s example and ask for Katie Perry to be renamed ´Aussie Katie Perry´ on her birth certificate?

How do we deal with people that appropriate a name and then try to use the appropriated name against others who have a legitimate right to the name? Of course it is a legal question, and the area of law that decides this is trademark ownership. If I want to introduce a $4000 handbag called ´Gucci by Alexandra´ chances are the relatively cheap ´Gucci´ (House of Gucci – now owned by the French company PPR) would probably send me the same type of ´cease and desist´ letters that Katy sent to Katie. If my surname was Gucci – and then I wanted to make handbags – what happens then? Well in that case – despite my surname – it is likely that I would also receive ´cease and desist´ letters as somebody is already using that name for handbags. If however I have been using that name before trademark protection was sought, somebody who comes along later just has to live with it. I would have what is known as ´prior use´. I don´t know if Katheryn Hudson (Katy Perry) actually understands this concept, as Jill Sobule already had a song called ´I Kissed a Girl´ in the mid 1990s. Maybe Katheryn should be the one getting ´cease and desist´ letters?

Prior use stops me recording a single under the stage name ´iPod´ and then suing Apple. In the case of Katy and Katie – Katie Perry (the designer) has been Katie Perry since she was born. Katy Perry (the evidently bi-curious singer) only became a 'Perry' in 2002 – when she had already had 17 years of being Kathryn Hudson. Prior use, therefore, would reside with Katie Perry (the designer) who was designing clothes for royalty before Katheryn Hudson (Katy) was born. But what about ´prior use´ with the name Macedonia?

Nationalism in Europe really only started in the nineteenth century – previously people tended to identify themselves by religion or language. Macedonian nationalism therefore only started in the mid 19th century – but of course the history of the Macedonian people goes back much further, when we lived under various foreign rulers. Genetically, many of us have the same markers as the Ancient Macedonians so we know that we are the descendants of those people, but for arguments sake, let´s look at something more modern and more blatant.

Misirkov´s 1903 book On Macedonian Matters states:

I am a Macedonian and this is how I see the position of my country: it is not Russia or Austria-Hungary that are the enemies of Macedonia, but Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia.´

OK lets use that for our ´prior use´ – we Macedonians have been using ´Macedonian´ as our national identity since at least that time. This was about 10 years before Greece even had any part of Macedonia under their control. Keep in mind that until the 1980s Greece was still overtly trying to suppress the Macedonian ethnicity in Greece – making laws to change names and outlaw languages at the same time arguing that Macedonians don´t exist anyway! They didn´t want Macedonian identity in Greece.

Greece then claimed the Macedonian identity as theirs in the late 1980s and early 1990s – about the same time that the Republic of Macedonia became independent. Why didn´t Greece take out full page advertising in the early 1980s stating that they were the only Macedonians back then? Greek school atlases in the 1970s had no problem showing Macedonia as a nation (marked as Macedonia) across the border from the Greek territory of ´Northern Greece´. We were using the term Macedonian for our identity at least 86 years before the Greeks were – and now the Greeks are trying to change our name. They don´t want to use it to replace ´Greek´ – they just don´t want us using ´Macedonian´. Too bad, we have ´prior use´.

I wish Katie Perry luck in defending her brand and hope that justice prevails. Hopefully Katheryn Hudson (aka Katy Perry) will realize that legally she doesn´t have a leg to stand on in enforcing a ´cease and desist´ order against an established fashion brand, gives up and uses her time to go write some more songs about kissing women. Greece on the other hand has had about 20 years of trying to change our identity from Macedonian – and hasn´t given up. I really wish we could all move on – people have names and identities they are born with – just accept it and grow up. Leaving Katie Perry alone isn´t going to harm Katy Perry´s music business and leaving Macedonia alone isn´t going to harm the levels of EU aid Greece is getting – there are more important things in the world than worrying what other people call themselves.