Monthly Archives: July 2009

Mon 27th July 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
AAA Auto Club Loses Dispute Over AAA.net - No, AAA doesn’t own exclusive rights to ‘AAA’. [Editor’s note: If you don’t have time to read this entire article, skip to the quote from Houston Putnam Lowry at the end. He believes the entire business model of registering generic domain names for later sale is prohibited under UDRP.] In a brazen attempt to get control of a three character domain name, automobile club AAA has lost an arbitration case for AAA.net. AAA argued that the domain name was confusingly ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hells Angels Cybersquatter Pays Up - Cybersquatter hands over domains — and up to $15,000 cash. In terms of domain name cybersquatting and trademark settlements, it’s hardly the biggest judgment. The difference is that this one involves someone who will actually have to pay up and it will certainly hurt his pocketbook. Earlier this year Domain Name Wire wrote about a lawsuit filed by Hells Angels against Terry Myers. Myers registered a bunch of domain names that included Hells Angels Motorcycle ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How to Promote Your Web Site with Facebook - Another way to promote your developed web sites. Big companies use fan pages on Facebook, and so should you. If you have a web site you actively promote, it makes sense to set up a fan page on the social network. The benefit should be fairly clear, but at the simplest level a fan page allows you to “push” your message out to fans whenever you’d like. Think of it as if all of your fans subscribe to your RSS feed and an email newsletter. Whenever you want to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LACOSTE Bullies Domain Name Owner, Loses - Designer threatens person with last name LaCoste. Famous designer Lacoste Alligator S.A. has threatened a Massachusetts woman over her company name and domain name, which happens to be the woman’s last name: LaCoste. In October 2008 the designer sent a cease and desist letter to Audrey LaCoste, demanding that she cease using the domain names LaCosteHealingJewelry.com and LaCostJewelry.com for her business. Perhaps scared of the lawyer’s harsh language and threats ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WSJ: What’s Chinese for .limitedgovernment? - Editorial says internet governance should stay as it is. I’ve long argued that the current ICANN set-up — with some oversight from the United States government — is ideal. I have some grievances about how ICANN is unaccountable to anything except itself, but believe there shouldn’t be a “United Nations” governing it. Of course, many people and governments outside the United States think they should have a hand in how the internet’s naming system is ... read more ...
Sun 26th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Biblical.com Sells for $17K on NameJet.com - The domain biblical.com sold on NameJet.com for $17,400. Here are a few other notable domain sales over the last couple of days at NameJet.com I know alot.com is a big site, but $2,877 for alike.com? I love dogs, but thedog.com for $13K, seems like “a lot”. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rod Beckstrom’s ICANN Message: Our Take - The New CEO of ICANN Rod Beckstrom Posted a “Message From The CEO” on ICANN site a few days ago. We welcome Mr Beckstrom to his new position and agree with him when he says: “”In the end, every single name must be unique and only one party can own it.”” True. ICANN, WIPO, trademark holders disputes, UDRP’s, The IRT, the URS all summarized perfectly in one sentence by Mr. Beckstrom. Only one party can own it. Now as to the two points in this message that causes me some consternation: In ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live.cc Domain Name Posts $10,000 Bid during Sedo - Domain would be one of the most expensive .cc domain names ever sold. Long before .me, .tv, and .ws were commercialized, the big rage of country code domain names was .cc. .CC is the country code domain for the Cocos islands, an Australian territory. A bidder on Sedo has placed a bid at $10,000 for Live.cc, which may be the largest amount ever paid for a .cc domain, save for a publicity stunt in 2000. NameBio shows three other sales of .cc domains over $5,000: Poker.cc ... read more ...
Sat 25th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Does The Internet Need A Non-Profit Extension? .NGO Is Proposed - There is a movement afoot to roll out a new gTLD that would be exclusively for charities and non-profit entities. I know your asking isn’t that what .Org’s are suppose to be for. The answer to that question is of course, but since the registry never required anyone to prove its non-profit status before obtaining or registering a .Org, its a opened extension. What is being proposed is a .NGO: NGO is short for “Non-Governmental Organizations, so the new extension would be for all non-profits ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Buy Or Sell: Answer To Yesterday’s Post - Yesterday in a post I thought we have some fun and see if you would buy or sell these domains at the following prices: Videospark.com    $8,500 Wet.net                   $6,500 55R.com                 $6,000 LejourPlus.com    $3,000 Monroe.net            $3,000 The results that while some of you would have bought buy wet.net and a few others voted for Monroe.net, the rest would sell all the domain. All  these domains are currently at auction at ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Network Solutions E-Commerce Servers Hacked - 573,000 credit and debit accounts compromised. Network Solutions’ web servers have been hacked, resulting in 573,000 compromised credit and debit accounts, writes Brian Krebs of Washington Post. The exposed data isn’t that of domain registration customers, but instead financial accounts of people who purchased something from a web site hosted with Network Solutions e-commerce package. In other words, it’s mostly customers of mom-and-pop stores on the web. Network ... read more ...
Fri 24th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is Third Time The Charm? Toxic Sells For $27,600 On NameJet.com - Toxic.com sold for the third time on Namejet.com today for $27,600, less than half the original sale price. As you may remember Toxic.com originally sold for $56,566 on May 4th and again on May 2oth for $40,500 after the first bidder defaulted. However in June,  NameJet.com announced a new deadbeat bidder policy which will hopefully mean that the third time will be  the charm, and the domain name will finally get paid for, and find a new home. I’m sure you have figured out that the winning bid ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Hotels.com Loses Appeal To TradeMark Hotels.com - Hotels.com lost its bid to register a trademark on “hotels.com” when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the mark was a “too generic term” to be trademarked. The decision handed down yesterday, upholds the ruling by the Trademark Appeal Board, of March 2008, which denied Hotels.com’s application for a trademark,  also calling it too generic. The appeallate court in upholding the denial of the trademark, stated in part: There are a “large number of similar usages of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
No End Users? GetARoom.com Just Sold On Sedo, Goes To Hotels.com Founders - The DNJournal reported on the sale of the domain GetARoom.com for $30,000 on Sedo.com a couple of weeks ago. Today it appears that the domain GetARoom.com was purchased by the founders of Hotels.com and is going to be rolled out in a multimillion dollar ad campaign. The site is already up and running. Bob Diener and David Litman, founded Hotels.com sold it in 2003,  have been under a five-year non-compete clause, announced the launch of getaroom.com yesterday. “We could not have found a better ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Buy Or Sell: 55r.com $6K; Videospark.com $8,500; Wet.net $6,500; Monroe.net $3K - Let’s play a game. Take the following domains and tell me would you pay these amounts to buy them, or take these amounts to sell them if you owned them. That’s your choice; Buy or Sell at these prices and later on today I will let you on to the secret, which if you know already, congrats, but don’t spoil it for the rest of us. Here’s the domains, make you picks by copying and pasting in the comment section with your picks for each, Buy or Sell: Videospark.com    $8,500 Wet.net                   ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
There Sure Are Some Interesting Domains On The Top .CM List - NameJet.com sent out an e-mail tonight reminding everyone that the .cm Landrush ends next week on July 30 at 5pm EST. In the e-mail it lists the “Most Popular .cm Pre-orders” and for me there are quite a few surprises on the list. While some of the domains I expected like: books.cm movies.cm music.cm news.cm free.cm hosting.cm realestate.cm insurance.cm jobs.cm loans.cm mail.cm tv.cm (the.com is trademarked) Other domains on the list are quite surprising, that they made it to the Most Popular ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Trademarking Generic Domain Names Just Got Harder - Court rules Hotels.com can’t be trademarked. A federal appeals court has ruled against Hotels.com in its bid to trademark its name. The court ruled that “Hotels” is generic and descriptive of its business. Here’s what it means for domain name owners: 1. Generic domain names are harder to trademark and thus harder to protect. For example, Candy.com would likely not be able to get a trademark. However, the use of a generic term not related to the principle ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
EducationDynamics Snags a Generic Domain Through Arbitration - After losing challenges for three generic domains, school referral service wins a biggie. EducationDynamics, LLC has made several attempts to get generic domain names through UDRP domain arbitration. It has lost cases for earn-your-degree.com, graduateschool.com, and graduateschools.com. But on Wednesday the company scored a victory, winning the generic domain name eLearner.com through arbitration at National Arbitration Forum. EducationDynamics does have a trademark ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Digimedia: Developing a World’s Best Domain Portfolio - Digimedia has an enviable but daunting task: building out the world’s best domain name portfolio. Most domainers struggle with the question of which of their domain names to develop into full-fledged web sites. But imagine if your portfolio of domain names included Recipes.com, Shops.com, FantasyFootball.com, and MovieReviews.com? Choosing which of these blue chip domain names to develop first is a difficult task for Wichita Falls, Texas-based Digimedia. Digimedia ... read more ...
Thu 23rd July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DigiCam.com Sells For $10K On NameJet.com - The domain Digicam.com sold for $10,200 on NameJet.com Digicam is sometimes used to refer to to digital cameras. There is one trademark on the term. Other notable sales over the last few days at NameJet.com include: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Online Porn Covered By Search Engine Journal: “Porn Pushes The Boundaries On Technology” - A pretty interesting post this morning on the online porn industry, searches and user behaviors appeared in the Search Engine Journal. Anyone in the industry or any one owing adult domains should check it out. Some of the more interesting points is although more people are searching using the term “porn”, there are only 4 adult sites in the alexa.org top 100. “The proportion of people searching for porn related material is growing at a smaller rate than the overall online population.  In comparison ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Amazon.com Buys Zappos.com For $847 Million - Amazon.com announced today that they bought online retailer Zappos.com for $847 Million,  in a stock and cash transaction. According to the press release, Amazon will assume all outstanding options and warrants of Zappos in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, equal to approximately $807 million based on the average closing price for the 45 trading days ending July 17, 2009. In addition, Amazon will provide Zappos employees with $40 million ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Games Lawyers Play, UDRP Edition - Complainant tries to pull a fast one on arbitration panel. Today I was reading through the domain arbitration decision for ComPart.com, a domain owned by Vertical Axis. The complainant, a German company called Compart, said that the parked page at Compart.com was showing ads related to its software business. The complainant specifically said the parked page showed ads of direct competitors, such as software4students.co.uk and 31touchdownloads.com. That would be ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Arbitration is Like The Energizer Bunny: Keep Filing and Filing and… - There’s no limit to the number of times a complainant can file a UDRP. I’ve written a few times about domain arbitration cases in which the complainant re-files a case for the same domain name. It seems kind of like an appeal process for the complainant (an opportunity not afforded to respondents). After seeing varying panel responses to refiled cases, I was confused about what the rules are for filing a case for the same domain twice. Perhaps that’s because ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Site Search Data is Gold Mine for Developed Web Sites - Use site search data to find out what your visitors are looking for. Navigation of web sites is mostly defined by the web designer. You arrive at the home page and click on one of the links that the web designer decided should be on the home page. You go to the next page and do the same thing, and so-on. But what are your visitors really looking for when they arrive on your web site? The richest data comes from your search box. Your visitor’s searches are ... read more ...