WWE Pursues More Legal Action, Hulk Hogan name usage, Batista note
On Saturday, September 10, 2005 at 1:16 AM EST In yet another legal push, World Wrestling Entertainment's legal department issued a letter to the owner of the BigVanVader.com website demanding that the domain be turned over to them after Leon "Vader" White agreed to a WWE Legends contract recently, thus giving WWE the rights to the name, copyrights of that character and the ownership of the domain name. The only problem with that is Leon White nor WWE owns the rights to the "Vader" name. The rights to that name belongs to George Lucas' Lucasfilm, which created the "Darth Vader" character for the Star Wars films starting in 1977. There are also no active trademarks for the name "Big Van Vader" as well. WWE did have copyrights for the "Vader" name during his run with the company, but abandoned it in October of 1998. Lucasfilm picked up the rights in September of 2004.
On the bottom of an e-mail that was sent out promoting the October 3rd RAW event in Dallas, TX where the company will return to the USA Network for a three hour show, the bottom reads: "Hulk Hogan is a trademark owned by Terry Bollea, and is used with permission."
Credit: Dave Scherer @ PWInsider.com
WWE.com has posted a video from Batista's recent autograph signing at a Toys R Us pushing new WWE merchandise.