I was trying to think of a good DUI site and came up with DDAMM.com which was available and I registered last month in june. I thought up on my own "Drunk Drivers Against Mad Mothers" as the name of the site but then when I looked it up on Google, I noticed that the 80's musical group Slayer has a song of that same exact name. I'm not into heavy metal so i had no idea. I'm going to aim the site at drunk driving tips and avoiding DUI. Any legal issues i should know beforehand with using the name of the song as the site title?
You need to do a trademark search for the term "DDAMM" to see if anyone else has trademarked it. If nothing turns up there you should be fine.
He is planning on using the SONG TITLE, not just the acronym, so he has other issues than just checking to see if the acronym is trademarked.
I have a question. Aren't song titles non-copyrighted and unable to be copyrighted. I ask because many bands have songs with the same name Take Nirvana's "Lithium" and Evanescence's "Lithium." I know that is only one word but there are many I can't think of any at the moment.
It's a derivative works rule, for example you should investigate the way how Weird Al Yankovic makes his parodies. Not sure about the covers (same lyrics, other artist) but they're regulated at publishing stage AFAIK thus original author may ask to stop singing his songs roughly. Googled the following: song titles can't be copyrighted but if there was something more serious from the same author at this name.. but what? CD? concert? songbook? tour? whole band?
Correct. But titles can become trademarks: http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/trademrk.html#titles http://www.publaw.com/titles.html