Canadian politician Anne McLellan might not be quite as famous an American Actress Julia Roberts. But when it comes to filing complaints against so-called domain-name "cybersquatters," the signature of Canada's justice minister is probably worth noting

Canadian politician Anne McLellan might not be quite as famous an American Actress Julia Roberts. But when it comes to filing complaints against so-called domain-name "cybersquatters," the signature of Canada's justice minister - also the nation's attorney general - is probably worth noting. This month, McLellan, a two-term member of federal Parliament for the ruling Liberal Party, filed her beef over the Internet addresses AnneMcLellan.com and AnneMcLellan.org under a dispute resolution process, which has already seen victories for a number of famous individuals - including actress Roberts - who sought to claim sound-alike domains. The two addresses at the center of McLellan's complaint were registered by Internet services company SmartCanuk.com of Calgary, Alberta. McLellan's home riding is in Alberta's other major city, Edmonton. But SmartCanuk's Al Green told Newsbytes he thinks he has a better chance of defending the ownership of his domains than did the owner of JuliaRoberts.com. Green's assertion is more than just a comment on the profile of Canadian politics among Internet users. He said it addresses one of the key issues in the speedy resolution process for domain disputes launched by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) late last year. ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) requires that those filing complaints show that they have a right to the domain name and that the current holder does not. Initially, the rights to the words that make up domain names was spelled out in the UDRP as being decided on the existence of trademarks. However, a series of decisions arising from the more than 1,000 cases filed in the 8-month-old process has since extended protections to trade names - as opposed to registered marks - and monikers of "famous" people. In the Roberts.com case, an arbitrator assigned by the UN-backed World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ruled in May that the actress's name was famous enough to carry the weight of a trademark for the purposes of the UDRP dispute.