Names keep entrepreneurs up at night. I recently read this post about Redmonk Development’s odyssey to claim ownership of their chosen handle. While their case never went to court, it took seven years for them to receive full web domain rights to their name after a slow and frustrating process of securing the official hand-over from the previous owner of redmonk.net and @redmonk.

This reminded me of another “what’s in a name” battle that I witnessed play out in a very different venue. In late 2002, I went to a punk show in my Texas hometown to see American Nightmare, a Boston band I had seen play the year before. I ended up seeing American Nothing, a band noticeably weighed down by litigation.

The Boston American Nightmare released their demo in 2000 as part of a revival of a genre called “hardcore punk” that had peaked in the 1980s. A casual disregard for the business practices of the music industry was built into the culture of hardcore: more than a decade before, bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat paved the way for modern indie music by establishing their own record labels and booking their own cross-country tours.

For this reason, the idea of copyrighting intellectual property didn’t occur to American Nightmare. Unfortunately, the issue was forced when a Philadelphia band using the same name filed charges after the hardcore band released their first full-length record. Though the Boston American Nightmare could arguably claim prior use (the Philly band didn’t release their first record until 2006), the drummer of the plaintiff band had filed a trademark on the name in 2001. Recognizing the financial consequences of standing their ground, the Boston band cycled through several new names – first the abbreviation A.N., then the “American Nothing” I saw in 2002 – finally settling on the name Give Up the Ghost, which seemed to strike a tacit note of resignation.

They learned their lesson: the band’s members jointly applied to trademark their new name in 2003 to preemptively resolve any future legal disputes. They broke up soon after, however, and the trademark was abandoned.

The point I took away from this battle was that even within a cultural movement that prides itself on existing outside of the established order, there are still rules that can be imposed and commercial realities that must be faced. Some artists and musicians have to learn this the hard way. In this case, there is a sort of karmic ending: Wes Eisold, the singer of American Nightmare/AN/GUTG, settled out of court with the platinum-selling rock band Fall Out Boy, who used Eisold’s lyrics on one of their songs without permission. The punk IP sword cuts both ways.