Julia Roberts Wins Namesake URL

Julia Roberts successfully arbitrates to stop man from using her name in a URL

By Emily Farache Jun 01, 2000 6:00 PMTags
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

But there is only one Julia Roberts. Well, one juliaroberts.com.

The megastar got control of her own Internet domain this week, thanks to web savvy lawyers who pleaded her case in Cyberspace to an international arbitration panel.

Roberts' attorneys won her case by emails entirely.

The $20 million Erin Brockovich actress had filed a complaint on March 25 with the World Intellectual Property Organization, one of four firms authorized by the nonprofit Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers to settle so-called cybersquatting disputes.

She charged that Russell Boyd, of Princeton, New Jersey, registered the juliaroberts.com URL and had tried to auction the URL on eBay, and that when the actress complained, he turned it into a fan site. A WIPO panel agreed with the actress.

"[The] respondent registered and used the domain name in bad faith," the WIPO ruling said.

Boyd isn't too happy. He states on the site (which will soon be history), "Julia the multimillionaire and her team of lawyers have struck a powerful blow against the common man and his mistaken belief in free speech."

Boyd is alone on this one, though. Even Roberts' fans are expressing their pleasure in the decision on his site. "This site sucks anyhow. I'm glad she won," James writes.

But "Sodapop" questions the ramifications of the ruling: "If I registered my own name as a domain name and there happened to be a celebrity with the same name, why does the celebrity have any more right to reregister the name than I do?"