Madonna Wins Web Site From Cybersquatter

ByABC News
October 17, 2000, 2:38 PM

October 16 -- An international panel has sided with Madonna, evicting a New York businessman from the Internet address madonna.com. Looks like we are, in fact, living in a material world.

Madonna, whose latest album, Music, debuted at the top of the charts in September, filed the complaint in July at the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization against New Yorker Dan Parisi.

On Monday, WIPO announced that a three-member panel had ordered Parisi to transfer the site to Madonna. The panel said Parisi had no trademark right to the name Madonna and failed to prove legitimate interest in the domain name.

WIPO said this was not the first cybersquatting case involving Parisi, who had also registered domain names such as wallstreetjournal.com.

This isn't the first time that WIPO has ruled in favor of celebrities. Julia Roberts recently won the rights to her name, as did prog-rockers Jethro Tull. Sting, on the other hand, failed in his attempt to win sting.com, because WIPO decided sting was "a common English word."

In other Madonna news, her new baby, Rocco Ritchie, is already making waves across the pond. The BBC's new celebrity magazine, Star, has included him in its list of Britain's most eligible bachelors under the age of 24. At 2 months, Rocco is actually under the age of 1, and likely won't begin dating anytime soon.

Reuters contributed to this report.