Hey folks is it possible to make a fan based website of a famous athlete like for example waynegretzky.org and put adsense ads or sell text links on it? Can anyone advise before i go on with this? thanks
Contact his PR people. Send a few "professional" emails asking if it is ok to use the individual's name based on the fan site model. Be prepared when they ask you for your business model as they will want to see if you plan on making a profit off of the individual's name sake. If you list purely fan site and adsense will generate income to pay for the hosting, you may get away with a simple agreement as non-profit. Once again, practice proper due diligence under the vicarious liability doctrine Cheers,
Thanks zebulon, it will be mainly adsense to help pay for hosting, plus i will probably put some donate links to charity organizations. They are not .com names, but mostly .org names which are mostly for informational websites which i will provide, plus i know everything possible about baseball from the 1970's and 1980's. Cant help it if im a geeklol.
You might be safer registering something like unofficialwaynegretzky.org, and making a big point on the home page of it not being an official website -- "the independent website for real fans of the Gretzker!" That might give you at least some protection against 'passing off' claims. But then, I am not a lawyer.
Or i can just make a huge website and get it ranked for the names of the stars without their names in the url. Besides it shouldnt be that hard to get them ranked in msn and yahoo if there isnt much competition. Also i got some unofficial advice from a lawyer that said as long as it wasnt a commercial site and fan based model its ok also. We will see, but thank you also ceemage for this advice , i might take it also. I just know i can easily write up to 1000 pages on the top american sports as i used to be a huge sport nut from the 70's to the late 80's
It's indeed possible. Unfortunately, it's also possible the famous athlete might fuss about it, or at least his marketing and/or legal folks might. What zebulon posted is one thing to explore. What ceemage also posted can work, though it's not 100% guaranteed, of course. A rule of thumb is anytime you desire to register a domain bearing a (possible) trademark and put ads for whatever reason, it's best to secure permission. If they don't reply, don't assume consent. Some famous athletes care, some don't. Mileage varies.