I think that's for Trademarks, but it could be both, I'm not sure. To where this applies to the thread, however,

You're right that the "defend it" thing is for trademarks (and also for patents, both "utility" patents that describe inventions and "design" patents that describe the design aspects of things, called "registered designs" in UK law), but the key thing in the context of this thread is that the names of fictional characters *are* trademarks. "James" is not trademarked, and neither is "Kirk", nor the letter "T", but put them together as "James T. Kirk" and assign them to your character that is a starship captain, especially in STO, and you proceed directly into trademark infringement.

the IP holder wouldn't go after the player using the name, that's too complicated to sort out, from their perspective, they'd go after EA/BioWare, which is why the use of copyrighted material is against the ToS.

It's not so much that it's complicated, but that, complicated or not, it's too expensive.

And as noted, it's *trademarked* rather than copyrighted.

You're right that the "defend it" thing is for trademarks (and also for patents, both "utility" patents that describe inventions and "design" patents that describe the design aspects of things, called "registered designs" in UK law), but the key thing in the context of this thread is that the names of fictional characters *are* trademarks. "James" is not trademarked, and neither is "Kirk", nor the letter "T", but put them together as "James T. Kirk" and assign them to your character that is a starship captain, especially in STO, and you proceed directly into trademark infringement.

 

It's not so much that it's complicated, but that, complicated or not, it's too expensive.

 

And as noted, it's *trademarked* rather than copyrighted.

I would argue that it's copyright. The literal right to copy the name into something not created by the owner of the IP. While James T Kirk is indeed instantly recognizable as belonging to Star Trek, I'm not sure you'd find a registered trademark on the character. Note that I haven't looked. But if the right's holder saw someone using that name as a YouTube channel, for example, the takedown notice would be for copyright infringement.