Are you sure the browser is sending name= in the query line ? I tried a bit of code and couldn't duplicate your example:

use CGI;
my $q= new CGI;

print "content-type: text/plain\n\n";

if ($q->param()) {
  print "got param $_\n" for ($q->param());
}

print "the end\n";
[download]

This on CGI version '2.56', calling it as http://script?name= did print out "got param name".

Tiago