Chris Bosh has always been keen on using the Internet and associated forms of social media get his name out in the public domain; now he can actually use his name to do it, and thanks to him hundreds of other famous names will too.
In a recent settlement in U.S. Federal Court, the Toronto Raptors all-star forward recovered the rights to ChrisBosh.com to use as a domain name under the provisions of the Federal Anti-Cyber squatting Consumer Protection Act.
Bosh had won an earlier judgment for $120,000 (US) from serial cyber squatter Luis Zavala but in a unique twist – and doubting that Zavala would pay – convinced the judge to award him rights to the long list of celebrity domain names Zavala had accumulated and maintained over the years, including a number of names belonging to Bosh’s NBA peers.
“It’s a partial payment for the damage award,” Brian L. Heidelberger, Bosh’s lawyer and a Chicago-based intellectual property expert at Winston & Strawn said in an interview. “And Chris out of the goodness of his heart is giving those domain names back for free without obligation because he thought it was wrong for the cyber squatter to get away with sitting on all of these famous people’s names.”
The list includes about 800 people ranging from singer Britney Spears to NBA All-Stars such as the Phoenix Suns’s Amare Stoudemire and Orlando Magic’s Rashard Lewis.
“This is Chris going above and beyond,” said Heidelberger. “We solicited a number of players on that list to see if they wanted to join the lawsuit and share the expenses and nobody did and Chris decided he would take it upon himself to take care of it. He’s not only regained control of his own domain name but everyone else’s and he’s giving them back for free.”
Before the ruling fans wanting to find Bosh online had to go to www.Chris-Bosh.com. Now they can go to www.ChrisBosh.com, where they will be redirected to the original site.
Heidelberger wasn’t sure how valuable the cyber squatting was for Zavala, but suggested it must have been worthwhile given the expense of registering and maintaining multiple domain names over time.
“We don’t have any numbers but we assume he made a lot of money doing this over the years,” said Heidelberger. “He owned over 800 domain names and he had to register and maintain them. He was making money through an advertising scheme where you would type in “Chris Bosh” and come to a web page that was not Chris Bosh’s.
“And on the web page was a number of advertising links. When someone clicked on that link the website the person was brought to would pay for that traffic through the Google AdSense program and he would get a portion of that revenue for bringing the traffic to the site.
“So he made money on every web page by diverting traffic that should have gone to various celebrity web sites.”
Bosh initially contacted Zavala and asked him to return the use of his domain name and was refused. Heidelberger said a number of celebrities and athletes have paid the cyber squatter “thousands of dollars” to regain the rights to their domain names.
In an e-mail exchange entered in court Zavala explained: “I have no intentions of handing over my domain. I am not in the business of giving domains away.”
