isen.blog

IDENTITY QUESTIONS
by David S. Isenberg

[This article originally appeared in VON Magazine,
January 2007, p. 48 -- David I]

The package of military strategy monographs was addressed
to David Isenberg at my house, but I couldn't understand
why. Then when I Googled up "Isenberg" and "military," I
immediately found another David Isenberg, a Senior analyst
at BASIC, the British American Security Information
Council, a think tank on global security. I phoned BASIC
in Washington DC and reached my nominal doppelganger.
Clearly this David Isenberg was the intended recipient. We
exchanged addresses and pleasantries. I repacked the
papers and sent them off. Later, I dipped into his
military strategy writings. They were good! I felt proud to
be confused with him.

Here's another true story. Once at a conference, I was
surprised to find that I had already registered -- and
paid! No dental exams for this horse; I put on my badge
and went a-mingling. A friend pointed at my badge and
asked if I'd changed my middle initial. I looked down and
saw "David A. Isenberg." I wheeled and bulled to the front
of the registration line to report the mistake. I stood
next to a puzzled man facing a harried registration clerk.
"I can't find your badge," the clerk said. I put my badge
on the counter preparing to declare the mistake, when the
fellow exclaimed, "There's my badge!" And that's how David
S. Isenberg met David A. Isenberg, Senior Product Director
of Atlantic Broadband. Atlantic Broadband is a surviving
Cable TV competitor, in the top 20 with a strong triple-
play offering. I would not be embarrassed to be confused
with him either.

Fortunately my name is not Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones
or Brown, which are the five most frequent family names in
the 1990 U.S. Census. Nobody but the TSA is apt to think
that John Smith is a unique identifier. On the other hand
a name like David Isenberg is unlikely enough that people
were confused, in fact, on at least two occasions. I
calculate, using name frequencies in the 1990 U.S. Census,
that there are about 150 David Isenbergs in the U.S. I
suspect I could find them all with a reasonable search
engine.

The Evil Isenberg

But woah! Suppose there were a David Isenberg that acted
so badly that he besmirched the reputation of all us other
David Isenbergs. The other 149 of us would be out of luck.
There'd be nothing we could do but endure the embarrassment
or change out names -- and no guarantees that a new name
would be immune from other bad actors with that name.

Here's another possibility. Suppose there were another
David Isenberg who was a telecom columnist! Very
confusing! Under trademark law, if I were there firstest
with the mostest, the bull goose columnist, if when you
said, "David Isenberg the telecom columnist," everybody
thought of me and nobody thought of the other guy, then I
could go to court to compel the imposter to write under a
different name.

In addition, I could go one step further. I could register
David Isenberg as a trademark with the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (PTO). I'd have to register it in a
particular class of business; for example, I could register
David Isenberg as an advertising business, but then I could
not stop somebody from selling groceries under the name of
David Isenberg, no matter how confusing or how embarrassing
it might be.

Here's the rub. Suppose I had been doing business as the
undisputed David Isenberg, telecom columnist, for many
years. Meanwhile suppose that somebody else had registered
David Isenberg with the PTO for the business of writing.
And suppose this David-Isenberg-come-lately asserted that I
must stop using my name for column writing. And, finally,
suppose it would cost years, and thousands of dollars, and
untold amounts of bad energy to fight back.

In such a situation there's a right thing and a very
different prudent thing. Before the Internet, two David
Isenbergs in similar businesses might never know of each
other. But today, as the Internet brings us together, it
collapses name space so we're all semantic neighbors. We
need new ways to deal with names and identities, not just
in business, but in every aspect of our lives. Where
should we start?

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