Talk about a whiney star. From The Tennessean:
Keith Urban countersues Keith Urban
Keith D. Urban, the painter, has filed court documents claiming that the lawsuit filed by the famous singer Keith Urban about the painter's Web site is baseless and a tool to intimidate him.
In February, country musician Keith L. Urban filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Nashville accusing the Wayne, N.J., painter, who owns www.keithurban.com, of federal trademark infringement and violation of the anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, among other things. The suit didn't specify monetary damages, but wants the site address transferred to the singer and an injunction barring the painter from operating a site that suggests any relationship between the two.
The February lawsuit claimed the painter is purposely trying to mislead Internet users into thinking that the Web site and the paintings for sale belong to the singer. At the top are Google ads for the musician's concert tickets and videos. "It has become apparent that he is attempting to capitalize on Keith's success," Paul Freundlich, the musician's publicist, said shortly after the original filing.
Not so, said the painter's attorney.
"This is an odd fact pattern in the sense that you have a situation where you have two individuals with the same name," said the painter's Nashville-based attorney, Paul Kruse. Kruse said it is a not a situation of a person of another name masquerading as Urban. "One of the pieces of evidence we made of record is his birth certificate."
"Of course, this is the thing that makes this case a little different than garden-variety, trademark infringement cyber-squatting kinds of cases that the musician's lawyers are painting in his proceedings," Kruse said. "Our guy is a painter. He freely admits that he isn't as famous as the musician, but it is his name.
"It seems like the musician is being very strong-armed in his tactics, when in fact, our guy has had this name since he was born."
The painter got the website a couple months befor the singer so I do not see any problems. Sour grapes on the part of the singer...
I love Keith Urban the singer, but......to be technical, Keith the singer was actually born with the name "Keith Urbahn". In actuality, the name is not his. He should drop the petty suit. I went to the site a few years ago and knew that it could not be the singer's site.
Only some of the most gullible Keith Urban fanatics would be dumb enough to buy a painting. If this painter has made much money from people thinking he was the singer, I doubt it is much, and Keith Urban the multi-millionaire with the multi-millionaire wife is a petty bully who just wants to take over the .com site.
Actually, the case does have merit. I rememember going to the .com site a few years ago in 2004 when Keith Urban was just heading for the crest of his stardom. Back then, that site was very clearly a whole different site about a painter with an identical name. In fact, at that time, he had a disclaimer on the site that he was not Keith Urban the singer. When this suit hit, I visited his site again to see if it had any merit and this painter got sly. Not once did it now say he wasn't the singer and, in fact, his comments that he paints as a hobby could easily lead people to believe he was and that this was his sideline. I think the singer should supeona all the painter's sales to show their increases from fans who thought they were getting a painting from the singer!
It's not sour grapes. The painter has been using his website to mislead people. He can deny it all he wants, but he was very sly about some of his information on his site. And the real kicker in this is that after the lawsuit was filed, the painter suddenly changed his webpage design. The way it looks now is not at all how it has looked for a few years now and how it looked when the suit was filed. He changes it after the lawsuit and then files a countersuit saying it's groundless? That nobody could mistake it for the singers? Yeah, sure. Also, this issue has been going on for some time but the painter wouldn't work it out, so the lawsuit was the final alternative.