So, I had an amusing clash of worlds today. Actually it may well continue, it's hard to say!

I am an administrator on the Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga wiki. Short story: this wiki is a collective work of parody in a fantasy setting. Yes, I am a geek, but we all must have our hobbies, right? If you want to know more about it, check out this story. It was sort of a flash-in-the-pan as popular websites go, but I find it relaxing now to be a part of the maintenance crew and occasionally contribute when I need to write a few sentences that don't involve the law.

Well, this morning the following appeared:

Hello, This is The legal dept. here at the Maxwell Blade theatre of magic. Maxwell Blade is a registered trademark name and we are getting some cross references and emails due to your "maxwell's blade" advertising on the net. Could we resolve this matter by using a different name or another solution as to differ any future reference or connection to Mr. Maxwell Blade. Please respond Thank you

The username employed was "maxwell Blade" and the email address given was "blade39@alltel.net" which suggested to me that this was spam, or possibly someone playing along with one of the wiki's recurring humorous themes: legal action, frivolous and otherwise. So I hit Google and searched for "maxwell blade." It turns out that Maxwell's Blade of Treachery from ELotH:TES occupies spot number eight... and the rest of the top ten refer to this guy.

Which doesn't mean he or his legal department had anything to do with the warning, but how to be sure? Replying to the given email address could easily put me on a spam list. Failure to reply, who knows? I finally settled for posting this reply on the public comment section:

Feel free to drop me an email [gave address] to discuss the nature of the ELotH:TES site. Please be prepared to verify your identity; I will consult Martindale-Hubbell and your local bar association to confirm your identity as an attorney. It would also be helpful if your email originated from maxwellblade.com, but if you are outside counsel that won't be necessary. I would be happy to discuss this issue with you.

I don't really expect a reply, but then, I'm not sure what the next step would be if I did! It would be relatively trivial to change the name of a fictional artifact, but I am not going to change someone else's contributions to the wiki based on unverified lawyer-speak.

I suppose if "maxwell Blade" is an actual lawyer and can show me how there exists a legitimate concern over the trademarked magician's name "Maxwell Blade," we can just change the wiki... but we would want to include the history of the name change in the article, which is unlikely to change the Google rank. Suddenly I'm left to wonder whether trademarks can be considered "diluted" by sheer virtue of their Google rank, which seems like an awful stretch, especially when the trademark occupies nine of the top ten spots.

Of course, this is borrowing a jack, I still don't know that the complaint was real.

If it turns out to be real, I'll probably forward the correspondence to the guys over at Penny Arcade and ask their opinion. I suspect I know what their reaction will be, but I won't make any assumptions based on my suspicions.

So that's all I have on that; if I do hear back, I'll post an update. But there you go: even in my non-legal hobbies, the law seems to follow me. And I'm not even a lawyer!