Do not take this as legal advice.
It's my opinion that in this particular case, you ought to save yourself the time and the money.
However, in general, it depends. To be more specific, it depends on how serious your "target" is about their name, and how serious YOU are about using your first amendment rights to defend your ownership of the domain name.
What determines each of these is a deeper level of dependence. Namely, how much the "target" relies on their name, and how much you rely on being able to own the domain name consisting of said name.
If they've sent you a cease and desist letter, or attempted to take you to WIPO over it, they obviously rely on their name to great enough of an extent that you really need to be serious about keeping it.
Using the example of Hines Ward, this would be VERY difficult to defend, as it's an uncommon name, and therefore you would have a harder time pulling the "common name" argument.
If I were you, and the name in question was truly worth the battle for (i.e. keeping it will generate a justifiable volume of revenue, or is likely to result in a worthwhile settlement from your adversary), you may want to consider setting up a fan site which acknowledges, and is in line with, the intellectual property which is that person's name, but as a very key point,
does not profit off of things relating specifically to that mark.
A
perfect example of this is the ladygaga.org case in September...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/lady-gaga-loses-legal-fight-239805
The owner of this name was able to retain ownership as it was merely a fan site, perfectly acceptable within free speech, but no wares of any sort were being offered with respect to Lady Gaga's name. Therefore, no infringement was found.
The NAF decision can be found here:
http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1403808.htm
(pretty cool name that respondent has, isn't it?)
So, to specifically address this situation, forget about it. It's not worth it, especially because from a demand standpoint, the way traffic is driven in relation to football players is much different from that of recording artists such as Lady Gaga.
