Chicago 2016 Officials, USOC Seek Rights To Chicago2016.com

As Chicago "wages its battle to host the 2016 Olympics, it also finds itself scrapping over a valuable piece of cyberspace: the domain name of chicago2016.com," according to Kathy Bergen of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. Chicago 2016 officials and the USOC are "trying to wrest that online address from Stephen Frayne Jr., a 29-year-old MBA student" from Evanston, Illinois. Frayne secured the online address in '04, "about two years before the bid was launched," and recently he has "laid claim to 40 online addresses that combine a city name and year, including tokyo2016.com." Chicago 2016 Communications Dir Patrick Sandusky said, "We certainly see chicago2016.com as the logical default domain for our site, and we believe having someone else control it is misleading for people seeking information about Chicago's bid." Chicago 2016, which uses chicago2016.org as its official Web site, is "seeking to win control of chicago2016.com through a complaint filed with an international arbitration organization." A decision "could come as soon as Monday." However, Frayne yesterday filed suit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, "seeking to halt the arbitration proceedings and to protect his claim on chicago2016.com and tokyo2016.com." Frayne last Monday "launched the site that aims to be a forum for discussion of Chicago's bid, and he said he's launching one for Tokyo as well" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 9/18).