HI, I’m new to this whole affiliate thing. I hope to have my web sites up and running by the middle of March. I just happened to come across this post. Back in the eighties I have developed a board game and had two copyright infringement cases. It’s a little touchy depending on how you copyright was structured. In my case like yours it was the name. An example Bigfoot you may have a copyright that protects the use of footwear, in that case someone would be able to use it for something else, my advice is to get ahold of your relative the copyright attorney and have them sendoff an official notice of infringement, as soon as possible the one thing that really seems to matter is time the longer they use your name the stronger their case.