Hello. I am after some advice. I own a 1word.com that consists of a non generic first name. This name is actually the firstnameonly.com of a person who won Australian Idol. I registered the domain half way through the show, many weeks before announcement was made that this person was actually crowned the winner as i saw the potential in them & had plans to sell fan merchandise on the domain should they had won which they did. In regards to SEO, this domain in question would rank very highly for keyword value being a non generic one word domain containing the most important keyword. Is it possible to do this? If i owned the domain BEFORE this person became a celebrity can i use the domain for whatever i want? Can it still be classed at domain squatting? or not? Say for example: If i own tempra.com and some band becomes famous with the name tempra, can i sell stuff related to them on my site? I understand that at the point of appearing on the show, they are classified as a 'contestant' & not a celebrity. But, when do they actually become a celebrity? When is the line drawn? After they win the show? Please give me some professional advice on this.
You are asking about an attempt ride the goodwill established by someone else. Even if you owned the domain before this person had national exposure (you didn't) you couldn't use it for commercial purposes (take in any revenue or advertising) by using it to profit off of their name. A classic example would be "madonna.com. While the singer doesn't own exclusive rights to the mark, as soon as the owner of the domain used it a manner to profit off of her image, he became liable for infringement. He wound up spending about a million in legal fees and still lost the domain. I would not use the domain in anyway that mentions this person, nor attempt to sell it to them. I think that since this isn't your real name, combined with the timing of the registration, they could certainly attempt to take the domain.
as long as u owned it before they used the name, became famous you can keep the name once you use the site to infringe on there trademark then you will lose the name