I was assuming someone just won at trolling.

I don't think that he even does have to change his name, my understanding is that trademarks only apply within the industry the holder operates. The example I always heard back in college was book titles - you could legally title a book "Krispy Kreme" because your book is not a direct competitor with the donut chain.

I could be wrong of course.

I think Krispy Kreme got his rap name from the same place M&M got his.

Old Zircon - You're correct to an extent. I've only filed one trademark in my time, but you do have to select a usage for it from a variety of categories. So the same name can be used for multiple products/industries/sectors by different companies. Of course, that doesn't mean someone can't file a lawsuit and battle it out in court if they feel damage of some kind is being done. It also doesn't mean a big company can't file multiple trademarks. Coca Cola has thousands upon thousands of trademarks. I wouldn't be surprised if Krispy Kreme (or whatever their company is) has trademarks that cover entertainment personalities for promotional purposes. And I doubt young rapper Krispy has the legal team to make fighting it a risk worth taking.

Walker is pretty much correct. I've been waiting for the Krispy Kreme people to serve him for months. About time, what a bunch of slacking IP attorneys! Could he prevail? Probably not, given his use of the weird spelling and the questionable nature of his business. Now he's really fucked, having spent all that time and irreplaceable advertizing building up the brand recognition of a mark he doesn't even own. What a fuckup. Oh yeah, bazillion stars for that.

I don't know about that. It's entirely possible his plan was to get into the newspaper for the legal issue. Him going viral wasn't something he could have counted on, whereas the newspapers are pretty fucking predictable. It's pretty clear he's a lot more clever than he lets on and his Krispy Kreme persona is very much something he engineered.

I don't buy that he didn't think about it. He's a pretty convincing amateur and clearly a lot of thought has gone into his videos beyond just not singing well. I don't think the losses are too terrible, everybody that is following him will find out his new name and I suspect that people looking for Krispy Kreme will still find him because this is the internet age. Having an audience actively participate in renaming the artist is a pretty good way of engaging them. Besides, I doubt he planned to use his skills to pretend to be Krispy Kreme the incompetent rap artist for ever.

I assume this is more of an RIAA style "we don't have a real case but we know you can't afford to fight us so it will never go to court" intimidation thing. I also don't doubt that he was expecting this and it's part of the plan. Hell, even my high school band tried this but it was before the Internet so the chances of successfully getting sued for naming ourselves after a Little Debbie product were basically zero.

*before the Internet became the dominant force in society, not before it existed. I've still got some time left before I'm older than the Internet.

It looks like these guys went on a buying binge of all things Kreme.

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about 100 hits on TESS. And they own just about every one. Big pockets, those.