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Sting Stymied, Jethro Tull Triumphant
In WIPO Rulings
What does Jethro Tull have over Sting? The latter may have sex appeal and that nifty Jaguar commercial, but the dinosaur rockers are the masters of their own Web site.

Sting has lost his case to evict the holder of the Internet address sting.com, making him the first celebrity to be dealt such a blow.

In June, Sting filed suit with the World Intellectual Property Organization—the United Nations copyright and intellectual property agency that runs an arbitration system to boot Net users who have registered famous names in the hopes of making a profit by reselling it—against Michael Urvan of Marietta, GA.

WIPO decided that the ex-Police man failed to prove that Urvan, who obtained the name five years ago, had done so in bad faith and also provided no evidence that he'd registered the name as a trademark. Sting's attorneys claimed that Urvan had offered to sell back the domain name for $25,000, yet provided no proof of this offer, and Urvan has denied ever making such an offer.

Urvan, whose site describes him as "the competitive online gamer, globally ranked for his skills by the Online Gaming League as well as the Champions League for Quake," goes by the name Sting while competing against his online foes. The panel also noted that the name "Sting" was, in fact, a common English word.

Meanwhile, WIPO ruled in favor of Jethro Tull, whose frontman, Ian Anderson, filed against Denny Hammerton of Minneola, FL, for the addresses jethrotull.com and jethro-tull.com. The band claimed Hammerton offered to sell the site for $13,000.

In this instance, the organization said the domain names had been registered and used in bad faith by their holder, who had failed to prove a legitimate interest in them, and ordered their transfer to Jethro Tull.

Anderson said he'll now target the fauvre artist Ian Anderson, as well as the former KUNV disc jockey Ian Anderson, for having the same name.

A total of 817 claimants have filed complaints about cyber-squatting through WIPO's online arbitration system since it was set up in December.

Among them are celebrities including Tina Turner, Julia Roberts, John Tesh and the estate of the late Jimi Hendrix.

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