Is it illegal if someone charges you for using their name on forums that weren't even created by them?

Question

I'm in a pickle. Some guy owns this site, lets call it example.com. Example.com is his site and he has made it a trade mark and it is copyrighted. His site was offline for some reason, so a friend of his who also used his forums (example.com), decides to create some temporary forums on a free site that is not official or owned by any trademark or copyright (just the name used on the forums). So I create an account on these forums using the name of the owner of the real one (as a joke), and then 1 day later, I find out that the example.com site is back up, and the owner wants to take legal action as I apparently broke copyright laws by using his name, which is a 5 letter name, lets use "Spoty" in this example, as it's the equivalent of the real name he uses. So was it illegal for me to use the name "Spoty" on the "temporary example.com" forums, which nowhere had any copyright notifications.

Here are the details again:

A guy named Spoty owns example.com, the site went offline for some reason. A friend of Spoty's created a free temporary site for example.com which contains NO copyright notifications of any sort. I created an account under the username Spoty, and pretended to be him as a joke, but did not alter the site, merely posted topics. Spoty now wants to take legal action, claiming I broke the law because I pretended to be him on his site. The site I posted on has no notifications of trademarks or copyrights.

Any help would be appreciated. I took law class in school, but never dealt with Copyright laws, so I have no idea what the laws really are. Thanks :)

Answer 1

i own a couple of sites on line. And unless "Someone Hacked into it" they could not take over my site unless they have my password and a few other things.

When you open a site you are listed as owner and or moderator. People who are members can post but they can't change anything.

There is a strong possibility that you can be in some trouble.

Answer 2

It is illegal to use some body elses name on any thing. If it was copy righted even more so.

Answer 3

I don't think I know of a single case where a person has copyrighted their own name.  I don't think you could possibly do it.

If Spoty is the man's real name, you should be okay.  If not, he would have to copyright Spoty to come after you.

  

Answer 4

He cannot copyright that name.

He is merely bluffing and you have nothing to worry about. Merely using a name like that isn't copyright. If it was then anyone who used that name on any forum would be sued.   He is lying because you pissed him off.