It's OK for original Beach Boy Al Jardine to keep going on surfing safaris - but he better be careful how he shoots the curls. In an attempt to impose a cease-fire on at least one front in the litigation war among the surviving members of the '60s megagroup the Beach Boys and their heirs, US District Judge Harry L. Hupp this week issued a sweeping 11-page ruling against Jardine and his well-publicized effort to use the Beach Boys name on the concert circuit.

Hupp called the lawsuit "a tragic mess" and said that he had sought in vain several times to get the parties to make peace among themselves. Among other things, Hupp even invoked the name of another - and arguably lesser - '60s band, Steppenwolf, in a legal incantation against the unauthorized proliferation of Beach Boys bands.

On Monday, Hupp granted a partial summary judgment and a permanent injunction in favor of Brother Records Inc., the holding company formed by the Beach Boys to handle their joint interests, in its suit against Jardine. The injunction sets in concrete a preliminary injunction that Hupp issued last year.

Hupp ruled that Brother is the owner of the "Beach Boys" trademark and that "Jardine infringes the trademark if he uses it, or any variant of it, in the name or title of his band" without a license from Brother Records. Hupp added "the caveat that Jardine may, without using the name in the trademark in the name or the title of his band, factually describe his history of a founding member of the Beach Boys."

For a time, Jardine headlined his band under the name "Beach Boys Family & Friends." He also proposed to tour under the name "Beach Boy Al Jardine and Family and Friends," Hupp wrote in his decision. Now, Jardine performs with a group called "Al Jardine Family and Friends," according to Jardine's Web site.

The judge said that Jardine's use of the Beach Boys name had "caused numerous instances of confusion both with the consuming general public and with the producers of musical events" who sometimes had advertised Jardine's band as the genuine Beach Boys.

Although Jardine holds a 25 percent stake in Brother Records, he fell out with Brother's three other shareholders in the 1990s when death and dissension splintered the Beach Boys. Original band member Carl Wilson died in 1998, and his brother, Brian Wilson, beset by psychological problems, stopped touring. Meanwhile lead singer Mike Love decided he no longer wanted to tour with Jardine, according to Hupp's synopsis of the feud. [Another of the five original band members, Dennis Wilson, drowned in 1983.] Love and Jardine then started touring separately, with both briefly using the Beach Boys name.

However, the rest of Brother Records' board, including the executor of Carl Wilson's estate and Brian Wilson's conservator, sued Jardine in 1999, asserting that Jardine didn't have a license to use the Beach Boys trademark.

Love, a first cousin of the Wilson brothers, got a license and now has the exclusive right to tour under the Beach Boys flag. In siding with Brother Records, Hupp dismissed Jardine's argument that his expropriation of the Beach Boy name was "fair use." Hupp ruled that Jardine and his attorneys had "fundamentally misread" a case involving the group Steppenwolf.

A decision by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals last year in a spat over the use of the name Steppenwolf "emphatically did not say that the plaintiff could use the name of the former band in the title of his band under the fair use doctrine." So there. Early signs are that Hupp's decision will not calm the waters. Jardine attorney Jeffrey S. Benice told me he respectfully thinks the judge's decision is all wet and that he plans an appeal to the rockin' 9th Circuit.

Meanwhile, Benice filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court last month for about $4 million, claiming that other band members excluded him from concerts. Brother Records attorney Edwin McPherson said he believes Hupp's ruling effectively wiped out Jardine's Superior Court case. McPherson also hopes that the aging Beach Boys - they're all in their late 50s - can find some good vibrations among themselves eventually. Wouldn't it be nice.