Need legal help

[Animeniax]

If I opened a ramen noodle house in the US and named it Ichiraku Ramen Bar, who could potentially sue me for the name rights?

[RyougaZell]

Viz would most probably.

[Ryllharu]

Can't you just do what Japanese animators and Hollywood producers do whenever they fail to get appropriate sponsorship/endorsement? Misspell a few letters and you're home free.

"McDonalds" --> "WacDonalds"
"Coca-Cola" ---> "COLA" (red can)
"Zabu" (a detergent) --> "Zabubu"
"DKNY" --> "DINKY"
"Gundam" --> "****am"

[Buffalobiian]

According to this,

http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Ichiraku_Ramen_Bar

Restaurants with the same name exist already.

[Board of Command]

Ichilak Ramen Bar

[Animeniax]

According to this,

http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Ichiraku_Ramen_Bar

Restaurants with the same name exist already.
Cool, but those restaurants are in Japan. If I opened the shop in America, I wonder if I could be held legally liable by companies like Viz like Ryouga suggested, or even the original Ichiraku company.

Btw, I will definitely find and eat at one of these Ichiraku's in Fukuoka the next time I'm in Japan.

[Psyke]

Just don't expect anything naruto related inside :p

[Animeniax]

Just don't expect anything naruto related inside :p
I'm way past my Naruto fandom, so unless there were some rare collectibles available, I wouldn't be disappointed if there were no Naruto decorations in these restaurants. I love fresh ramen and gyoza, so I'd go for that.

[poopdeville]

Nobody could sue you for that. (That's not actually true. A person can sue another person for any reason. It is up to the court to decide if the suit has merit)

But at least it isn't a trademark issue, as there presumably aren't any restaurants (or businesses in other competing industries) who you could be confused for -- in your state at least.

As far as I can tell, there is no "copyright" issue.

Disney has sued people for using their images (like painted pictures of Mickey Mouse in a day care center), under some sort of copyright or licensing infringement. I bet they won, but I don't see what their justification could be. I vaguely them claiming that the use of their art by third parties could be seen as an unauthorized endorsement of a business by Disney. That's closer to trademark law than copyright law, but I think Disney won, and trademark law would have told Disney "tough titties".

Let's not forget that Disney thinks they own Cinderella, Snow White, and dozens of other hundreds of years old fairy tales. Their sense of entitlement is unbounded.

[Kraco]

Let's not forget that Disney thinks they own Cinderella, Snow White, and dozens of other hundreds of years old fairy tales. Their sense of entitlement is unbounded.

I doubt Disney thinks they own more than their own designs of the charaters and locations and the specific adaptations of the stories (scripts) they used for the movies, plus other such things that obviously fall under copyrights.