A Fight for Madonna's Name

By Stephen M. Silverman

Tuesday July 28, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

Madonna, the pop star, isn't the only party seeking her name. The Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb., wants to Internet domain handle, too. At the moment, reports the Associated Press, the winner of the Who Owns the Name Madonna Contest is a New Jersey entrepreneur named Dan Parisi, who reportedly has used his Madonna site to post some adult material. Madonna has already asked the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization to take the Madonna domain name away from Parisi and give it to her. (The body is expected to hand down a decision sometime this month.) But now Madonna, the famous living one, has a new opponent. "We're hoping to get the name," hospital spokeswoman Teresa Harms told the AP yesterday. Parisi, it turns out, even offered to give the medical center the name last spring, though Harms said she knows no reason why.