Will the Real Sarah Palin Please Tweet Up?

@SarahPalin is not Sarah Palin. Well actually the Twitter account is owned by Sarah Palin just not the same Sarah Palin that you, Tea Party members or legions of haters think of when they see the words Sarah Palin.

It turns out there is someone other than the former Alaska governor named Sarah Palin and she is not a politician or even a Republican -- based on who she follows on Twitter or some of her tweets.

Instead the Sarah Palin who runs the account @SarahPalin is trapped in a strange world she shares with Michael Bolton. No not the singer but the Mike Judge software-programming character from "Office Space."

@SarahPalin's bio on Twitter shows you how much she loves receiving angry tweets and hate mail every time Sarah Palin, the politician, does anything.

"NOT I repeat NOT, the ex-gov of Alaska, just have the same name. Terrible dontcha know. I do have the ability to kill caribou with a stare."

But with the real Sarah Palin -- who goes by the Twitter handle @SarahPalinUSA -- trying to trademark her name, will the other Sarah Palin have to give up her Twitter account?

While legally speaking social media names are on a first come first serve basis, which is different than URLs, it is hard to get a name back.

Sen. John McCain found that out the hard way when he wanted to create a LinkedIn profile but found out that another John McCain existed in the digital universe and he had already claimed the name.

He tried to get it for himself but was unable to do so.

But let Kanye West serve as an example to Gov. Sarah Palin. We all know the rapper was not a big fan of President George W. Bush but that doesn't mean he can't have something in common  with the former president's conservative counterpart.

Twitter retains ownership of all profile names on its service. The San Francisco-based microblogging site reserves the right to reclaim any name and while the company usually does not take profiles away from people who have an @ handle based on their real name, Twitter has no problem taking profiles away from celebrity impersonators.

Kanye West complained to Twitter that someone was impersonating him on Twitter and actually won. The complaint was one of the reasons Twitter launched its celebrity verification system.

But Sarah Palin is not impersonating Sarah Palin. She actually is Sarah Palin, which means trademark or not that Sarah Palin should be able to keep her @SarahPalin handle, unless of course Sarah Palin decides to buy @SarahPalin from Sarah Palin once Sarah Palin officially owns the trademark Sarah Palin.

Make sense?

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