While Tom Cruise has been an a-list celeb for many years, once again, today’s news shows that entities, including superstars, aren’t keeping their Intellectual Property in check. Infringement Notification, recently formed under the OY9.NET umbrella, stands ready to assist your company in a domain violation audit and give you a plan to get your domain(s), and/or intellectual property, back.

An Internet dispute body run by the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization has awarded the actor custody of TomCruise.com, ordering a cybersquatter who had been operating the site to turn the URL over to its rightful owner.

Cruise is just one of hundreds of celebrities whose famous names have been snatched up by Canadian businessman Jeff Burgar, who uses the sites to redirect visitors to his Celebrity1000.com Website.

Shutting down errant domain operators is one of my life’s passions. I enjoy it more than you know, realizing that people have the audacity to actually register a name, like TOMCRUISE.COM, and expect NOT to be bothered about it. Intellectual Property is one of the most valuable assets that you can ever have, ensure they are protected.

Burgar had owned and operated TomCruise.com since 1996. He is well known to WIPO, having previously gone before panels to argue his right to own domain names including CelineDion.com (he lost), KevinSpacey.com (he lost), PamelaAnderson.com (he lost) and BruceSpringsteen.com (he won and still maintains the site), among others.


Lawyers for the Mission: Impossible star argued that Cruise had “common law trademark and service mark rights” to the term Tom Cruise; that Burgar was making money off the actor’s name through third-party ads on his Celebrity1000.com site; and that visitors to the site might be confused into believing that Cruise was somehow affiliated with it.

If your company has intellectual property, ensure it’s protected and contact I.N. today.

[ Source: Tom Cruise in Dot Command - Yahoo! News ]