GENEVA (Reuters) - British international striker Wayne Rooney, among 30 players on a shortlist for FIFA’s World Player of the Year Award, has won ownership of a Web site in his name, a United Nations agency said on Friday.
Rooney, who plays for Manchester United, won exclusive rights to domain name waynerooney.com after proving his name was a registered trademark, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said.
The ruling in the cybersquatting case, decided by an arbitrator named by WIPO, found that Huw Marshall had registered the site in bad faith in April 2002 and had “no rights or legitimate interests” in it.
Marshall, a Welsh actor and fan of Rooney’s first club Everton, claimed he had recognized the young striker’s “star properties” early on. He had wanted to set up a non-commercial fan site but lost interest when Rooney moved to Manchester.
Arbitrator Tony Willoughby wrote he was “unable to accept that Marshall had no eye to the potential commercial benefit” and ordered the contested site transferred to Rooney.
Rooney was named on Thursday on a FIFA World Player of the Year Award shortlist along with France’s former star player Zinedine Zidane, Barcelona’s Brazilian player Ronaldinho and Portuguese midfielder Luis Figo.
But he was kept scoreless in England’s 2-0 defeat by Croatia on Wednesday, a setback in their hopes of reaching Euro 2008 after a poor campaign in the World Cup won by Italy.
Rooney’s teammate Joe Cole, Brazilian superstars Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, Dutchman Jaap Stam, Italy’s Francesco Totti and Ghanaian-born prodigy Freddy Adu are among soccer players who have won cybersquatting cases at the Geneva-based agency.
Under WIPO’s low-cost, fast-track arbitration procedure, ownership of a domain name is transferred within 10 days unless the loser launches a court case challenging the decision.