Sting v. Michael Urvan

---

In 1995 Michael Urvan purchased the domain name “sting.com.” Urvan was an avid gamer and used the domain name to support his gaming; while playing online video games he used the screen name “=sting=” and had been using it for a few years prior to the UDRP filing. In 2000 singer and entertainer Gordon Sumner, more popularly known as “Sting” the lead singer for the band “The Police” filed a UDRP complaint against Urvan alleging that he had the right to the “sting.com” domain name. 

The primary argument that Sting put forward was that he had common law rights to the word “sting” because of the association of the word "sting" with himself as a world-renowned recording artist. Urvan counter argued that the word “sting” is a commonly used word in the English language and that there are 20 trademarks registrations with the word “sting” in the United States. Urvan further argued that his use of “sting” was not a direct competition with the recording artist and therefore he was not attempting to cause any confusion between himself and the singer Sting.  The panel did not reach a definitive conclusion on this issue, but they did state that since Sting is a commonly used word in the English language the case was different than other famous domain name cases such as the case of “juliaroberts.com.”

The panel ended up finding in favor of Urvan over Sting because Urvan was not using the “sting.com” domain name in bad faith. The panel held that Urvan was using the word "sting" for a genuine purpose, and did not register the domain for the purpose of cybersquatting on the goodwill Sting had built up over the years from his brand as a performer. Although Sting was later able to acquire the domain name through other means, this case was distinctive because of the high profile loss for a well-known brand.