Famous Amos lost the right to his own nickname because his cookie company was taken over after falling into financial trouble. The new owners kicked Amos out of the operation, and he tried to start another company selling cookies under his "Famous Amos" brand, which he had come to be known as when he was selling cookies as a street vendor in New York. The new owners of the Famous Amos trademark sued and won, Amos cannot use his nickname to sell cookies. He might be able to use "Famous Amos" to sell rebuilt engines, or something different, but not to sell cookies.
No, I don't think so. There was a case where Welch's (the grape people) sued over a store named Welch's. I don't know for sure what happened to it, but I heard that the grape people won. I *do* know that a guy tried to use the name Kevlar for an FTP client, and DuPont said he couldn't, even though and FTP client has nothing to do with Kevlar the fiber.
Kevlar is a proprietary term, an exclusive registered trademark. The word did not exist before DuPont created it. Therefore, nobody is entitled to use that word commercially without DuPont's permission, even if associated with something totally different.
This is different from say, "Bullet Proof", or "Infinite Technologies", which can not be exclusively trademarked.
A person whose name is McDonald could not open a restaurant under his names sake, unless the name substantially differs from McDonald's the fast-food chain, such as "McDonald's Bar and Grill", so as to not easily promote or result in confusion between the two. He would also have to be careful that his establishment avoid baring any similarity or likeness to any of McDonald's intellectual properties. Opening a fast food burger joint would be pushing it.
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