About he who dares not speak his own name

For the past few days, Dilbert has been in trouble. A while ago, he started his own business, dilbertfiles.com, on company time and using company computers. As a result, when the company learned about Dilbert's venture, their lawyers seized not only the company, but the intellectual property rights to Dilbert's name.



What makes this even more interesting is that there's a true story behind it. John Fogarty, of Creedence Clearwater Revival, got into a nasty struggle with the owner of CCR's record label, one Saul Zaentz. Mr. Zaentz owned the copyright to CCR's catalog, including the rights to some of the most popular songs in the record business - Proud Mary, Who'll Stop the Rain, and Fortunate Son. When the band broke up and John Fogarty started a solo career, Zaentz sued Fogarty, claiming that one of Fogarty's new songs sounded too much like a CCR tune. According to the New York Times:

Essentially, Mr. Zaentz sued Mr. Fogerty for plagiarizing himself - to the tune of $140 million. Of course, Mr. Fogerty had provoked Mr. Zaentz with two thinly disguised attacks on the album: "Mr. Greed" and "Zanz Kant Dance" (eventually changed in the face of still more legal threats to "Vanz Kant Dance"), which Mr. Fogerty coyly described as "a song about a pig." Mr. Fogerty won the plagiarism case, with one aspect of it - whether Mr. Fogerty could sue Mr. Zaentz for reimbursement of his legal fees - eventually reaching the United States Supreme Court.

As a side note, Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, was clever to use dilbertfiles.com as the name of Dilbert's company. Adams has started a company that helps you send large files online. You can find out about the service at, you guess it, http://www.dilbertfiles.com.