When we were developing the American Heraldry Society's "Guidelines for Heraldic Practice in the United States Recommended* by the American Heraldry Society," we discussed at great length the following sort of scenario:

1. A family--let's call them the Hancocks--has been using a coat of arms, Gules, a dexter hand couped on a chief Argent three cocks Gules, in what is now the United States since the early 1700s. There are many extant artifacts with unimpeachable provenance, such as seals, silver, porcelain, and the blazon was published in Bolton's American Armory. The College of Arms has no record of these arms, and they've never been registered as a trademark, never copyrighted, etc., merely used for nearly 300 years without challenge.

2. In 1956, Han Xiao-xi, an immigrant from Hunan, sees the arms of Hancock on a Chinese export porcelain bowl in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and thinks it would make a fine logo for his chicken restaurant, Han Cock. He registers the logo as a trademark with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. After opening franchises in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, he registers it with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1962.

3. In 2008, An American of Scottish ancestry, James McHancock, petitions Lord Lyon for a grant in honor of his 5 x great-grandfather with matriculation to himself as heir male. Lord Lyon grants and matriculates Gules, a dexter hand couped on a chief Argent three cocks Gules.

Who has first right to these arms? The family that can prove 300 years of prescription and first publication, the first person to register them officially in some form in the United States, or the person with a grant from an official heraldic authority, albeit a foreign one?

I know how I would answer this. How would others?

The AHS guidelines can be examined at http://www.americanheraldry.org/page...ide.Guidelines

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* I emphasize "recommended" because the AHS is quite conscious that it has no standing to dictate anything to anyone.