Bill Cosby Wins His Fat Albert Domain Name

Anyone in the United States can register a domain name for just a few dollars and renew it every year, keeping it for themselves or selling it to someone else. When the Internet began booming in the mid-90s, many people rushed to buy domain names related to celebrities, such as juliaroberts.com, because they thought they’d be able to sell them later for lots of money. That idea fizzled in 1999, when the U.N. decided to develop an arbitration system to settle disputes over domain names. The arbitration group, called the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), allows people who think they have the right to a domain name to claim it without a costly legal battle or having to pay huge fees to buy the name.

The latest in the parade of celebrities to use the U.N. arbitration system is comedian Bill Cosby, who had filed a complaint against Sterling Davenport of Loretto, TN, to no avail. Davenport had registered the domain name fatalbert.org, and Cosby’s complaint said that the domain was being used in bad faith to attract people to a commercial search engine and a website that sold sexually explicit products. Davenport did not respond to Cosby’s complaint, so Cosby decided to seek arbitration from the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland. The arbitrator, John Kidd, awarded the Internet domain name to Cosby and said all rights to the name were to be transferred to him immediately. Because Davenport did not respond to the complaint at all, Kidd said, "The respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name."

Cosby claimed his right to the domain name because of the character Fat Albert he created in the 1960s. The character began as part of a standup comedy routine Cosby delivered about his childhood growing up in Philadelphia, and it later became a Saturday morning cartoon for children, "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids." The series first appeared on CBS in 1972, and a movie about Fat Albert was released last year.

Many celebrities have used the WIPO to win the Internet version of their names through U.N. arbitration. Some of the winners include Morgan Freeman, Julia Roberts, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Pamela Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, and Carmen Electra. Critics of the arbitration system say that it favors trademark holders and celebrities, and not individuals who may also have legitimate rights to the names for parody, criticism, and other purposes. Many regular people who happen to have the same name as celebrities have registered their own names, only to be challenged later by the celebrity with whom they share a name.