National Branding

Have there been any existing cases or situations (dear lazyweb), of branding or trademark issues where the names of nations or cities are concerned? (Apart from all the obvious ones we ignore, that is.)

I was thinking of this recently with regard to all those cities, and planets, of course, in SF, called New Something.. If J Random Interstellar Colony, set up by some private group, decides to call itself New America, does this current America have any recourse? Especially if it’s an ideologically unfortunate colony, or it had plans to use – or is using – the name itself?

And while it wasn’t a problem when they named New York (or indeed New Amsterdam) after those original cities, or indeed with our forty-odd Springfields, or a source of tension between Kansas City and Kansas City – or to pick a more separated example, Portland and Portland, if someone were today – or in a few hundred years time on another planet – to open a second New York and start touting for financial and commercial business, might the first one have a perfectly reasonable argument that this does constitute “passing off” in the legal sense?

I’m fairly certain there are lots of places in the Eldraeverse with a ™ in their name for this sort of reason, but I’m curious to know if it has any analogs in actuality.