Ike Turner trademarked the name “Tina Turner” during the years of the Revue. This trademark was, in his framing, commercial protection: he had built an act around a performer, he had experienced losing performers before, and the trademark was supposed to ensure that the act continued in his control even if the individual left.
In the divorce proceedings, the court awarded Tina Turner the right to use the name Tina Turner professionally. This is what the settlement records show: she received the right to continue performing under the name she had been known by for sixteen years. She did not receive, in the settlement, the trademark itself as a piece of commercial property — the legal situation was more complex than that, and subsequent filings and arrangements over the years addressed various aspects of intellectual property rights related to the name in ways that the available public record does not fully detail.
What is documented is: she could use the name. She did use the name. She built it into something that, by the mid-1980s, had a commercial value that exceeded the entire settlement of the divorce in any reasonable accounting.
The irony of Ike Turner’s trademark strategy is complete: he created the name, trademarked the name to protect himself from losing the performer who carried it, and then lost the performer anyway — and the performer went on to make the name far more valuable than it had ever been under his control.
He died on December 12, 2007, of a cocaine overdose, having spent his later years largely removed from the commercial mainstream that Tina Turner’s 1980s comeback had placed her at the center of.