tech-tag

11 year old girl sued for 50,000$ for buying her name as domain

October 24th, 2006

According to newspapers in Denmark, an 11 year old girl has been sued by the heirs of Marlene Dietrich, for bying the domain: www.marlene.eu.

A few days ago danish newspaper Politiken reported of an 11 year girl named Marlene, who has been contacted by the heirs of Marlene Dietrich.

According to the newspaper, the heir’s of the German actress claim, that they have the rights to the name Marlene. They are demanding that she hand over her domain www.marlene.eu and pay 50,000$ to compensate for the loss that she has inflicted on their business.

The girl and her family has nothing to fear according to a lawyer specialized in domains. The lawyer, Mikkel Gudsoe, tells the newspaper that you are allowed to use your own name, as long as it is not done in order to create confusion.

From my point of view, the logic must, that the girls “stealing” the traffic intended for the official Marlene Dietrich web site. That logic has a flaw, that the .eu domains are very new, and not getting a lot of traffic. This is indicated by the sponsored counter on the girls web site, according to this she did not have any visitors at all last week until saturday when the story was picked up by the newspaper.
It seems to me that the heirs, or their lawyers, are trying to avoid having to pay for the domain by scaring of the girl and her family.

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