Professional Poker Player Gus Hansen's Domain Name Recovered

Safenames is a company that prides itself on ensuring that celebrity names are not trademarked for the wrong reasons, which in most cases, is profit. Going on that premise, the company has recovered the domain name, "gushansen.com" for professional poker player Gus Hansen.

The domain name registrar and online brand protection company proved that the domain name of Hansen was registered in bad faith. The domain was used in a way that was creating confusion with the public, and Safenames also proved that the defendant infringed on Hansen's common law mark.

"We are very pleased that Safenames was able to win this dispute for Mr. Hansen," said Safenames Head Counsel Prudence Malinki, "I believe that this ruling will pave the way for other famous individuals and celebrities to recover domain names registered to third parties who are profiting from registered domains that contain their famous personal names."

Hansen has become one of the most recognizable figures in professional poker. He can be seen regularly on taped tournaments from the World series of Poker that are aired on ESPN. Hansen has also played in some of the biggest televised poker events in the world.

With the popularity of poker growing on a daily basis over the past several years, it has become common for players to be exploited. Safenames has helped to stave off at least one of these exploitations by going after the defendant, Yevgen Kudashov, in this domain name case.

September 11, 2009
Posted By Tom Jones
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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