Prince’s Estate Files Lawsuit Over Cybersquatting of Prince.com

The recording artist and actor Prince died at 57 of a fentanyl overdose in 2016 at his Paisley Park recording studio in suburban Minneapolis. His estate also owns three trademarks under the Prince name, which the estate claims is being trampled on by Domain Capital, a domain broker out of Englewood, New Jersey, who owns the rights to the domain name Prince.com.

The suit is being brought under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Passed in 1999, the law created a federal cause of action if a domain name was registered, trafficked or used in a way that infringed upon a trademark or personal name. Plaintiffs requested immediate and permanent injunctive relief, transfer of the domain, damages and attorneys’ fees.

According to the complaint, the company “has been ordered to transfer domain names under the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy for the registration and use of the domain names in bad faith.” Domain Capital provides a lease-back program where an owner of a domain sells the digital property to the company and the company then leases it back to the original owner for continued use, keeping the identity of the leasee private.

See Jason Tashea, Prince’s Estate Files Lawsuit Over Cybersquatting of Prince.com, ABA Journal, July 30, 2018.