The Appropriation of CERN Wife

CERN Wife in Ferney-Voltaire apartment, April 2012

Curiosity poked me: where is “CERN Wife” in Google’s search engine?  I checked, and there it was, on the very top of the first page.  But what is THAT?  Below the listing of my blog is www.lifeasacernwife.blogspot.com.  Life as a CERN wife?  Couldn’t whoever this is have thought of something other than CERN Wife?  That’s MY blog name!  And she uses it on blogspot, no less.

I clicked on this usurper’s URL and found the title of her blog: “A Year in France: Life as a CERN Wife”.  This is not quite plagiarism, but my blood pressure rose to the top of my head because my original blog title was “CERN Wife: Spending a Year in Ferney-Voltaire” – the town in France where we lived.  My first blog post was February 1, 2012.  Hers was September 3, 2012, less than two months after we had returned to the U.S. from France.

Her blog set-up is similar to mine as well.  Although fonts and template design are there on blogspot for the choosing, she selected the same font for her text, but a lighter color than the one I’m using, and her photographs, centered in the middle, like mine, are outlined in grey rather than black.  I don’t have a photo on the top of my blog.  She has one – a scene of undulating hills in autumn, which I suppose was taken in the nearby Jura Mountains.  This blogger’s content, as a young wife and new mother, is different from mine – so in reality she didn’t plagiarize, but still… 

One can’t copyright a title, whether naming a book, blog, or business.  The rational me has convinced the creative me that there is no reason to be perturbed that someone has appropriated my blog title.  I suppose I should be flattered that I am an original, and she (in all likelihood intelligent and pleasant) is derivative.