I'm planning on being active over the course of the next four years in politics. I'm intending to (for example) purchase domain name(s), perhaps sell merchandise. What general rules should we (whoever will be involved in politics) know in order to steer clearly away from trademark infringement, as we all know the Trump name is almost certainly tied up in trademarks all over the place.<p>NOTE: I'm left-leaning on most things, so trying to be especially careful :)<p>EDIT: Many folks were commenting that I probably should change the question to "trademark". Instead of changing back I probably should clarify that I probably mean both trademark and copyright. After all (for example), portraits of him, and perhaps portraits of his hotels or other assets may or may not be in play here?
You have three options:<p>1) Hire an actual lawyer.
2) Don't do this.
3) Do this, but take the risk of doing it without legal advice.<p>Note that I did not include a fourth option: "Get adequate legal advice about a complicated legal issue from a message board." I did not include it because it's not a real thing.
Talk to a lawyer. Although there are probably some lawyers on HN, I'm not one of them, and it would be difficult if not impossible to verify the credentials of anybody who claimed to be one.<p>The US government generally does not claim copyright on its works. However, the Trump name is more likely to be tied up in trademark law than copyright law, and this muddies the waters considerably. It works to your advantage in some ways, but against you in others. Be careful.