Cyber-speculator takes on ex-Beatle over domain name

By CHASE SQUIRES

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 28, 2001

LAND O'LAKES -- So Denny Hammerton has picked a fight with one of the biggest names in rock 'n' roll.

Is he nuts?

Without an attorney and apparently without fear, Hammerton said he has taken on knighted ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney to prove a point.

This, he says, is America. It is built on capitalism. It is built on laws and rights.

And Paul McCartney, even if he shares the stratosphere of rock with Elvis and Michael Jackson, is not above the law.

Hammerton, 48, is a cyber-speculator -- he dislikes the term cyber-squatter -- who realized the potential for profit in the Internet before many people, celebrities included. He secured more than 100 Internet addresses, called domain names, and offers them for sale.

Living in a duplex home on an out-of-the-way street in Land O'Lakes, Hammerton says he guards his privacy carefully. He didn't want his photograph taken for the newspaper, and he said he usually doesn't grant interviews, preferring to make his case on his Internet site he calls "my own newspaper."

He also said he doesn't see a need for an attorney. He writes his own legal briefs and keeps a folder full of Internet name-related cases at the ready. The cause is just, he said, and can be won without an attorney at his side.

Hammerton said he moved to this country eight years ago from England and made a living selling cars until the Internet caught his eye. Since 1996, he has turned his interest into a career, making his money with Internet ventures, including registering and selling domain names.

Paulmccartney.com was one of the domains he registered in 1996. Until recently, Hammerton controlled the site. Then McCartney's lawyers went after him and took over the name.

Hammerton wants it back.

"I'm still in America, right?" he asked. "You can come out here and take these things away from me? After I paid for them? Not here. Not in America."

The London-born former car salesman said he was quick to understand how domain names would work five or six years ago. Before a lot of people thought about the implications of the Internet, he had secured domain names, at a cost of $100 each.

Domains he gobbled up included janisjoplin.com, twiggy.com, ringo.com, paulmccartney.com,lindamccartney.com, jethrotull.com andjimihendrix.com.

As the rest of the business world came around, he let it be known that he would sell the domains, for the right price.

He even secured a Web site in his own name, hammerton.com. But he doesn't control that anymore.

He sold it.

"Someone else wanted it, they wanted to buy it, I sold it to them," he said. "That's doing business."

But some don't want to do business.

In one of his pending lawsuits, Hammerton said he was willing to sell paulmccartney.com for $200,000 and was rejected. McCartney's management team, New York-based MPL Communications, took their complaints to an international tribunal, the World International Property Organization, and for a $1,250 filing fee took control of the site, Hammerton said.

MPL officials did not return a telephone call by the Times for this story. The woman who answered the phone this week blurted out "I have no comment" before she knew what the call was about.

But last year, in the struggle for jimihendrix.com, the late rocker's sister, Janie, said a celebrity's name is more than just words or a Web address. The value is from the work the artist put into his or her career, she said.

"It's like somebody kidnapping your child and then holding him for ransom and saying now that I have the child, I can do whatever I want," Janie Hendrix told the Times. "The child doesn't belong to that person. Cyber-squatters look at themselves as real estate purchasers, but a domain name isn't real estate. My brother's name isn't real estate."

Hammerton countered McCartney's takeover of paulmccartney.com with a lawsuit in Pasco County's Circuit Court.

He also sued the rock band Jethro Tull, which he said was trying to take the domain namejethrotull.com from him, pointing out in his suit that no one in the band is named Jethro Tull. The band took its name from an English agronomist who lived from 1674 to 1741 and invented a horse-drawn device that planted seeds.

And he sued the estate of Jimi Hendrix.

No one from Jethro Tull responded to his suit last summer, and he maintains control of the site. Hendrix's organization countered by pulling the suit into federal court and has since taken control of the site.

But Hammerton said he is channeling his energy into the battle with McCartney to prove his point once and for all in a Florida court.

It's his unusual sense of humor, he said, that led him to take a few jabs at McCartney's empire by registering paulmccartneysucks.com and duplicating the management company's logo on one of his sites.

Paul McCartney didn't register his name as a trademark until after the Internet site was secured, Hammerton said. Therefore, he had just as much right to it as anyone else.

Besides, Hammerton said, there are at least 20 Paul McCartneys he has found living in the United States, so there's nothing unique about the name.

"I want to bring one of them in to court with me," he said. "It's a name."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright