Judge dismisses Andy Griffith case
You folks might recall that a man running for Sheriff in Grant County, Wisconsin changed his name from "William Harold Fenrick" to "Andrew Jackson Griffith" so he could run under the name "Andy Griffith" and hopefully use the iconic name to win the election.
He didn't win.
He did, however, have a lawsuit filed against him by Andy Griffith, the actor who played Andy Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show. Recently, however, a judge dismissed the case, saying that Fenrick did not violate any copyright and that what he did was protected under the First Amendment. I'm not a fancy big city lawyer, so I can't say much about this.
However, I will say this: why didn't he change his name to Andy Taylor, since that's the name of the actual character? For all the voters knew, he was that guy from that one episode of Hawaii Five-O.
Of course, I understand more people would recognize "Andy Griffith" than "Andy Taylor," that's exactly the reasoning I used when I first moved to Minneapolis, had a sex change, and applied for a job at the local news studio under the name Mary Tyler Moore.

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