Swimmer’s foundation goes after domain name owner.
The non-profit Michael Phelps Foundation, established by the Olympic swimmer, has sued to get the domain name MichaelPhelpsFoundation.com.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maine, names Domains by Proxy, Inc., a domain whois proxy service, and Does 1-10 as defendants. It is typical for a proxy service to be named in a lawsuit and it is typically dropped once the proxy service transfers the domain back to its real owner.
The domain name was registered in 2008, just two days after Phelps won his record setting eighth gold medal in a single Olympics. Phelps had not yet started his foundation.
The domain was originally registered by a Minnesota man before the whois proxy service was used. The author of the web site at MichaelPhelpsFoundation.com claims that he had good intentions in registering the domain name:
To be quite clear, MPF was created as a “foundation†or a home “base†where fans, like yourself, can come to share, chat, research, debate, contribute, and connect with one another on the past, present and future surrounding, who some are considering to be the greatest hero in history, Michael Phelps.
It wasn’t until after MPF was created that we heard that Michael Phelps was, in fact, going to establish a new swimming foundation.
A blog on the web site has two entries from 2008.
Troy says
Why the hell would a person be brain dead enough to register that? It is clearly not yours, leave it alone.
M. Menius says
Ditto above comment. Not sure whois privacy is justified anymore. Everyone’s information is out there anyway now … so shielding whois identity for “privacy” doesn’t seem like a legit rationale.
To be more clear, I really want cybersquatters exposed to the light of day as early and as often as possible. To see them punished as well as the reverse domain name hijackers.