John McAfee, founder of McAfee anti-virus fame, contributed or sold various assets to McAfee Associates. He alleges that he did not contribute or sell ‘his personal name’ to the company. The company certainly owned registrations that included the MCAFEE element. McAfee Associates was ultimately sold to Intel. Intel allegedly abandoned the MCAFEE trademark in 2014. John McAfee now wishes to work for a company that will be named John McAfee Global Technologies, which will perform services in the cyber-security field. Intel had protested, alleging that it owns the MCAFEE trademark (paragraph 26 of the complaint is puzzling as it seems to allege that Intel has ceased using the MCAFEE trademark, given Intel’s use of the mark at, for example, www.McAfee.com).

The Joseph Abboud case is a good place to start when contemplating to what extent one may use one’s own name (if one allegedly assigned away the trademark rights).

[embeddoc url=”https://www.schwimmerlegal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/833/2016/09/McAfee-v-Intel-1.pdf”]