/ 25 February 2001

CYBERSQUATTERS EVICTED

CANADIAN pop singer Celine Dion, Spanish soccer club Real Madrid and British budget airline EasyJet have all triumphed over ”cybersquatters” who used their names on Internet websites. The United Nations copyright agency WIPO said these were among a raft of new cases decided over the past two weeks by its arbitrators – who have already saved such stars as Julia Roberts and Madonna from misrepresentation on the Net. Other big names and firms who won the right to have offending, sometimes bogus, sites transferred to them were U.S. television actress Julie Brown and Japan’s Sony Corporation. The Celine Dion and Julie Brown cases were brought against a Canadian, Jeff Burgar, who admitted to arbitrators for WIPO – the World Intellectual Property Organisation – that he had registered sites using some 75 famous names. His site for the singer was celinedion.com, and – as in the Julie Brown case where he used juliebrown.com – he had registered it as representing a fan club. In both, he lost and the sites were ordered transferred to the two stars. – Reuters