Under pressure from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Dan Parisi will comply with a ruling to eliminate all suggestions that his porn site is related to the current presidential administration.
The terms of Parisi's trademark application for "Whitehouse" require him to clear up the foggy affiliation with the official White House website, which has been a lucrative source of misguided traffic to his site. An estimated two million users visit the site each month, including accidental visitations, which in some cases include children doing research on the president.
But after more than seven years as the owner of Whitehouse.com, Parisi is looking for a ticket out of the porn business and more time with his family. He has been shopping around for a buyer for the famed URL since February. There is no official word yet whether the White House is interested in purchasing the domain name.
Parisi's agreement with the PTO includes removing all political references to White House interns, first ladies, the president, and presidential candidate John Kerry, who for some time occupied the homepage of the website in a sexy faux debate stance with a porn star.
"Our candidates are better looking and probably know more about the economy," was the paysite's former tagline, which claims to reap in $1 million yearly in subscription fees.
The decision to grant Parisi the trademark was first denied and then was reversed this week by a PTO appeals panel.
Parisi has been persistent in winning the trademark in hopes that it will ramp up the sale price for the site and secure ownership of the domain name. Parisi has also said that he is looking for a buyer who is not in the adult business.
Whitehouse.com, not to be confused with Whitehouse.gov, the official website for the current White House administration, has been on the sale block at a time when popularly known web domains have been fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, from buyers looking for sites with established traffic revenue.
Whitehouse.com is also frequently mistaken for a website called Whitehousefoods.com, an applesauce company that has already expressed interest in purchasing the URL to save its customers from accidentally viewing porn. The company's parent, National Fruit Product Co., at one point took Parisi to court for trademark violation but lost.
In March, Parisi gave the U.S. government the gift of Whitehousekids.com, one of more than 100 derivations of Whitehouse.com that Parisi owns.
At the time, Parisi said he wanted to ensure that children don’t inadvertently stumble into one of the Internet’s seedier neighborhoods.
Parisi handed over Whitehousekids to the General Services Administration, saying he originally registered it for himself because, “We didn’t want somebody to start trouble with it.”
