Getting a COA registered

[Joseph McMillan]

It has nothing to do with any change and everything to do with the right to protect that to which I have exclusive ownership through a perfect title in law.

But, as Sir Crispin Agnew explains ("Conflict of Heraldic Laws", Juridical Review (1988); rpt. in Double Tressure (2009)), what you have a title to is a right in rem that, like all such rights, exists only in the jurisdiction in which it is created, unless other jurisdictions choose to recognize it. A copyright is another kind of right in rem. Something copyrighted in one country is protected in another country only to the extent the other country chooses to recognize the copyright. For copyrights, there are international conventions that generally provide for reciprocal protection, but even there the protection offered is limited by the receiving country's laws. For example, in the UK the Crown holds copyright of the King James Version of the Bible. This is not recognized or protected in the U.S.

There are no international conventions that provide for reciprocal protection of heraldic bearings, so a grant in one country may or may not be protected in another.

On the other hand:

Of course this is all intellectual debate as there is no historical context in which to place it (in the US court system).

It is, and for the life of me I can't imagine anyone else being interested at this point.... and if they are, maybe they need to get a life...

There actually is one single case that I've been able to find in which an American court protected a personal coat of arms against usurpation.

In 1947, Virginio F. Orsini sued the Eastern Wine Corporation for infringing the New York Civil Rights Law's provision against misappropriation of identity--specifically by placing the name Orsini and the Orsini coat of arms on its wine labels. Virginio Orsini claimed to be the senior member of the Orsini family, and argued that the use of his arms and last name constituted an infringement of his identity rights.

The company claimed that the law protected only a person's full name, that a surname alone was not subject to infringement.

The Supreme Court of New York ruled that the combination of the surname plus the coat of arms satisfied the requirements of the statute--the combination being equivalent to the use of the plaintiff's full name. The court issued an order restraining the company from using the Orsini name and arms on its wine bottles; the decision was subsequently upheld on appeal. Orsini v. Eastern Wine Corp., 190 Misc. 235; 73 N.Y.S.2d 426; 1947 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3032 (1947).

This case has been cited in other identity misappropriation cases, including in other states, but I've never seen it applied to another heraldic case.