Mindy Marie Sears - Traveller on the Offensive

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

The Prince George Citizen reports (http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/arti ... gal-action) a legal action by a "sovereign freeman" (well, freewoman) named Mindy Marie Sears who is suing an RCMP officer and the British Columbia Attorney General for vile misdeeds at a road-side stop. They owe her $200,000 and an apology. Darn right they do. Doesn't matter one bit that she didn't have a driver's licence and insurance.

I'll quote some of the narrative:

... she "served" the member with two notarized documents, one stating her name is copyrighted and the other a 113-point "Affidavit of Truth" outlining "my Truth and my Law."

"I am a Sovereign Freeman who operates with full responsibility and am not a child of the government, I do not see the need to ask permission to engage in lawful and peaceful activities, especially from those who claim limited liability," Sears states at one point in the affidavit.

According to Sears, she had pulled off to the shoulder of the highway to allow an "emergency vehicle to pass" but instead it stopped behind her and the RCMP member approached her "private travel conveyance."

After she presented the two documents to the member, stating clearly "you have been served," the member then "tried to remove a label from the private travel conveyance."

Sears said the member was then "asked to cease his actions and show clear lawful authority to remove property without consent" and asked if he was aware of section 39.1 of the Criminal Code, "which covers personal property and a claim of right."

In part the section states every person is protected from criminal responsibility for defending possession of personal property, "even against a person entitled by law to possession of it, if he uses no more force than necessary."

Mears said the officer ignored the question, "failing in his duties as a peace officer," and then told her he was arresting her for obstruction of justice "because I was not allowing him to remove my personal property."

When Mears repeated her question, she said the member asked if he needed to put her in handcuffs.

"Confused by his reaction, I restated my question," Sears said. "Then the officer got loud and shouted loudly at me, 'Do I have to put you in handcuffs?'"

Mears asked her question a third time and said the member then grabbed her arm, "physically assaulting me." Mears said her arm was bent behind her back and she was thrown against her vehicle then handcuffed.

"This action bruised my forearm, upper arm and wrist and caused severe pain to my shoulder and back," Mears said. The documents filed at the courthouse include a physicians' report outlining her injuries.

She said the member forced her into the back of the RCMP vehicle "simply for asking questions to the questions that I was being asked."

She said the member then "engaged in fraud by associating me with an expired licence without my consent. I did not ask him, at any time, to be my agent. He then removed my personal property without my expressed, written, and Notarized consent."

Sears was taken to the McBride RCMP detachment where she signed "under protest" a promise to appear in court. Sears is simultaneously facing charges of willfully resisting or obstructing a peace officer and is scheduled to make a first appearance in McBride provincial court on Friday.

In one of the online comments to the news article, "canucks_rule" observes that Mindy is a little out of luck as Criminal Code, s. 39 was repealed in 2012. After a quick review I think he's right. Nice catch canucks_rule!

I checked with the British Columbia Courts Online website and see that Mindy has managed to get herself into yet more trouble. She was scheduled for a Nov. 6, 2013 hearing, but did not show - another criminal charge to add to the list. Perhaps she did not consent. It looks like she was picked up the next day, brought to court, released on $500 bail, and has decided to retain counsel - her next scheduled appearance in January 10, 2014.

I looked for more about Mindy and her affairs, but only found that she had paid that nice Mr. Les Rakatti (viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9496) of copyright-name.com for the privilege of having copyright in her very own name. The notice can be read here:

• http://www.copyright-name.com/Mindy-Marie-Sears.htm

All told, Mindy's civil claim is pretty reasonable - that copyright notice indicates she can charge $500,000 per use. A bargain.

SMS Möwe

[Burnaby49]

At $200,000 a pop, and assuming that only the use of the full name is a copyright violation, I calculate you owe her $600,000. If she gets ticked off at the way you skirt the fringe of the law by just calling her Mindy or Mears (and in one instance Sears) and decides to hit you with the maximum you're out of pocket $1,500,000.

Actually, if you read the fine print on her Public Notice, your bill is going to be a lot bigger than that since it is based on $500,000 per use in 1960 purchasing power:

1. Grants and pledges the Secured Party a security interest in all of the User’s assets, land and personal property, and all of the User’s interest in assets, land, and personal property, as collateral, equal in purchasing power to the sum certain amount of $500,000.00 United States currency circa 1960 per each occurrence of use of the common-law copyrighted MINDY MARIE SEARS© as well as for each and every occurrence of use of one or more of all derivatives and variations in the spelling of MINDY MARIE SEARS©, plus costs, plus triple damages;

At that time my parents had just bought a modest house in Vancouver for $8,000. Probably worth 100X that now. Even if we just assume a general inflation rate increase over the 53 year interim Mowe owes ©Mindy-Marie: Sears ™ a lot of change. I think we're safe in using ©Mindy-Marie: Sears ™ because that is just trademarked and the document is silent on trademark violations.

All she has to do is prove that she has a valid copyright through the registration of her name at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office rather than with some bozo named Les Rakatti.

She sounds a lot like the woman I called a David Wynne Millerite in this post;

viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9377&start=180#p162842

Although the Millerite didn't talk about copyrighting her name. Sure had a bee in her bonnet about being forced by the evil state to have a driver's license and her right to travel without impediment though.

[fortinbras]

I figured out who helped Sears conjure up her bogus copyright document .....

http://www.copyright-name.com/Questions-and-Answers.htm

In law school, I learned copyright law from the Library of Congress guy who edited the Copyright Office Bulletin - pretty much the most knowledgeable copyright person in the US - and (1) the UCC doesn't have anything to do with copyrights, (2) under federal law, copyrights cannot be enforced in court unless/until they have been registered properly with the US Copyright Office, located in the Library of Congress, (3) names cannot be copyrighted (they might be trademarked, through the Patent Office in the Dept of Commerce), etc. etc. - all to the conclusion that paperwork like Sears has would be useful only if printed on really soft absorbent paper.

[rosvicl]

Common law copyright no longer exists in the United States, of course, and hasn't in quite a while, but I doubt Sears recognizes the right of the United States Congress to legislate on copyright. Which leads to the question of where she does think copyright law comes from, and whether she's thought about copyright expiration.

Hmm. I suspect the boards have been over this long since, but: if she's trying to claim copyright under the old system, she has to have sent the Library of Congress a registration form, two copies of whatever she is trying to copyright, and a filing fee in order to claim statutory damages.

[notorial dissent]

I doubt very seriously that she ever went that far as she does seem to be big on following the rules, any rules. If she did anything at all, she put a 2¢ stamp on some piece of paper with her scrawl on it and called it copyrighted.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Common law copyright no longer exists in the United States, of course, and hasn't in quite a while, but I doubt Sears recognizes the right of the United States Congress to legislate on copyright. Which leads to the question of where she does think copyright law comes from, and whether she's thought about copyright expiration. ...

Greetings rosvicl - and welcome to Quatloos!

Ms. Sears is attempting to copyright her name in Canada, which leads her to some difficulty. In Canada there has never been a common law copyright principle, copyright is solely a consequence of legislation.

Also, one has no copyright in their own name. In a rather notorious recent decision that focusses on Canadian Freeman-on-the-Land and Sovereign Citizen type litigants, Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571, Associate Chief Justice Rooke observed at para. 502:

There is not authority present, nor, I believe, capable of establishing that a personal name can form a creative work that would be subject to copyright. In any case, even if that were so, then copyright in a name would presumably vest with its authors, Mr. Meads’ parents. ...

I think the counterargument (just being playful) would be that those parents are obviously employees of their newborn child, with resulting IP transfer.

I am not all that familiar with the U.S. copyright scheme, but I have never heard of a common law form of copyright. My understanding is that there is a provision in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes legislation to create copyright protection. I would be very interested in learning more about a non-legislative variation on copyright in the U.S., and how that came about and operated.

SMS Möwe

[fortinbras]

The power to legislate on copyright is exclusively invested in the US Congress under the Constitution, Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 8: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

I might add that IF it were even possible to copyright a person's name, the right to obtain such a copyright would be vest, not in that named person, but in the other person (presumably a parent) who named him, as the copyright vests in the author .... and if the author makes something public without bothering to obtain a copyright for it, then it thereafter is in the public domain.