united-states
Can a person release music using the name of a fictional character as the artist name?
<p>A example of this would be a person releasing music with one of these names as the artist name: Mogul Khan (the Axe) from Dota 2, Malfurion Stormrage from Warcraft, Saruman from Lord of the Rings.</p>
<p>If this infringes on any rights, can this be avoided by changing the name slightly, such as removing spaces or adding numbers at the end?</p>

<p>There is a possibility that a fictional name is also a registered trademark, for example &quot;Harry Potter&quot;. You can check <a href="https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&amp;p_lang=english&amp;p_d=trmk" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, which will yield no matches fopr &quot;Mogul khan&quot; and 7 for &quot;Saruman&quot;. The uses of &quot;Saruman&quot; are specifically for kinds of jewelry. Registering a trademark is not absolute ownership of a name, it is limited to a specific context, so you would need to steer clear of launching a line of jewelry with the name &quot;Saruman&quot;.</p>
