On January 7, Jay-Z and Beyonce gave birth to their first daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. On January 11, a trademark application was filed for "Blue Ivy Carter NYC." However, the application was filed by a fashion designer unrelated to the Carter family. Who deserves the rights to a baby's name?

 

We've read about personal brands being "hijacked" after death, but at birth? Blue Ivy certainly has a personal brand, though she had nothing to do with it. Regardless, it can be surmised that fashion designer Joseph Mbeh wants to use the name to capitalize on an inferred affiliation with the already-famous baby.

 

Do celebrities have automatic rights to their children's names? Angelina Jolie recently dropped a case against a French perfumier that registered a perfume called "Shiloh." However, the name "Shiloh" is a bit more flexible than a fully unique first-middle-last name combination. While "Shiloh" could be used for a variety of reasons (as it was in the case of the perfumier), Blue Ivy Carter is obviously the Carter child's unequivocal identity...

 

And just like that, the trademark application was withdrawn. According to The Smoking Gun, an attorney for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office explained that Blue Ivy Carter "is a 'famous infant' and that consumers would incorrectly conclude that a line of apparel bearing the baby’s name 'is connected with the child though through the control of her parents.'" At last, the baby's personal brand is safe.

Well, almost. There is another trademark application filed by a Queens-based firm for the name "Blue Ivy Carter Glory IV," which the company claims to have been using since February 2011. Highly unlikely, but not in the case of Blue Ivy, a Boston-based events company. The company doesn't seem to mind sharing a name with the famous child, but one can imagine that the baby will eventually earn the rights to become the one, the only, Blue Ivy.