Singer Jennifer Lopez has filed papers against the owner of jenniferlopez.org and jenniferlopez.net, accusing him of cybersquatting.
The two sites are owned by one Jeremiah Tieman who lives in Arizona and uses the sites to display news, pictures and videos of and about the singer and includes a disclaimer at the bottom stating that the sites are fan sites and are not endorsed by Lopez. However, both sites also include prominent ads and links through to affiliate sites.
Case D2009-0057 was filed last week with the World Intellectual Property by Lopez’s charitable foundation – which support women and children on low incomes – rather than the hard-hitting IP lawyers Fross, Zelnick, Lehrman and Zissu that are the registered owners of Lopez’s dotcom website.
Tom Cruise has, unsurprisingly, won TomCruise.com from WIPO. And, unsurprisingly, he won it off Jeff Burgar who is notorious for having registered hundreds of celebrities names back in 1996 and used them to redirect to his Celebrity1000.com website.
Jeff sometimes fights these cases, sometimes not. This time he did and he exposed, yet again, how flawed the UDRP system is and why, with domain names again worth millions of dollars, this is an extremely important system to sort out.
ICANN has, for one reason of another, delayed a review of UDRP for at least five years, despite dozens of people arguing – and pointing out in clear terms – why it has to be done. It is vital that that review is now carried out as soon as possible.
Tom Cruise has won his domain namesake, TomCruise.com, from notorious cybersquatter Jeff Burgar.
Burgar contested the complaint and paid for a three-person panel at domain name arbirtrator WIPO to decide the issue. In the end though, they decided for the movie star and against Burgar – who is a regular at WIPO judgments, having registered hundreds of famous peoples’ name which he redirects to his Celebrity1000.com website.
The decision comes as no surprise to anyone who follows the uniform domain resolution policy (UDRP). But Burgar, – indisputably the most infamous domain name registrant – once again highlights flaws and inconsistencies in the UDRP model.
