Monthly Archives: May 2011

Tue 10th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Confusion About Domain Seizures Spreads After IP Constituency Comments - Commenters confused about domain seizures under URS. The number of comments submitted to ICANN about its proposed renewal agreement with VeriSign to run .net has exploded over the past hour. The source of the comments appears to be a misunderstanding over what the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) proposed in its comments. As I wrote earlier, IPC wants Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) to apply to new top level domain names. I believe the confusion started at ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Puzzle.com Domain Name Sells for $500,000 - Another big domain name sale to report. Domain name marketplace Afternic has completed the sale of Puzzle.com for a whopping $500,000. It’s unclear if the sale was handled on behalf of a third party seller or Afternic’s parent company. The old whois information for the domain included a Waltham, Massachusetts (the same city where the company is located) post office box and an email address for the BuyDomains brokerage. The buyer is based in Amsterdam. Puzzle.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Urgent: Now Intellectual Property Group Wants to Apply New Rights Protections to .Net - Make your voice heard now. (After reading this article I recommend reading more details about what this means.) Earlier this week I wrote about how a draft version of the business constituency’s comments about VeriSign’s renewal of the .net contract requested that uniform rapid suspension be added to .net. Thankfully the business constituency didn’t include that provision in its final comments. But the Intellectual Property Constituency did: Once the post-launch ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cleveland Browns Win Browns.com Domain Name - NFL team gets rights to Browns.com domain name. The Cleveland Browns football team just scored a big win off the field. A World Intellectual Property Forum panel awarded the team the domain name Browns.com in arbitration. According to the football franchise, the owner of the domain name used the page as a parked domain name with pay-per-click links to football topics. When the team reached out to the owner of the domain name, the name of the owner in the whois database ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Incumbents Opposed to UDRP Reform - Two largest UDRP providers opposed to UDRP reform. The two largest UDRP providers — National Arbitration Forum (NAF) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — are opposed to reforming the UDRP at this time. Representatives of NAF and WIPO made statements this morning on an ICANN conference call regarding “The State of the UDRP”. WIPO also released a written statement that you can view here. It seems that intellectual property interests are concerned ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Above.com In Settlement Talks with Verizon - Domain company working toward settlement over trademark lawsuit. Above.com is currently in settlement talks with Verizon over a lawsuit brought by Verizon in February, according to court records. Verizon filed the suit against Above.com, parent company Trellian, and some of its key employees back in February. It also served the company during DOMAINfest. The complaint alleges that the defendants use a number of false identities to traffic in trademark-infringing ... read more ...
Mon 9th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
MNS.com, Sells For “Well In Excess Of Six Figures” - According to an article in TheRealDeal.com, the domain name MNS.com was recently purchased by a large real estate developer in New York, formerly known as  TDG/TREGNY (the company that resulted from the merger of the Developers Group (TDG) and the Real Estate Group New York (TREGNY) and which is rebranding itself as MNS which stands for “Marketing and Sales”. The article goes on to quote the CEO of the newly named MNS, Andrew Barrocas, as saying about the acquisition of MNS.com: “But the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Another Domain Hack, Want.it Sells For $26K and Another 3 Letter, Mai.com Sells for $115K on Sedo.com - A couple of new sales just hit Sedo.com. The hack of Want.it sold for $26,500 Last week we wrote about another domain hack T.ag which sold for $60,000 Also hitting the wire today is the sale of MAI.com which sold for 80,000 Euros, which at today’s exchange rate is about $115,000 USD. A couple of days we wrote about another three letter .com sale when POW.com sold for $75,000 There are a ton of possible things that MAI stands for and you can see some of them here. Congrats to all Buyers and Sellers. .It ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SnapNames.com May Showcase Auction Closes Tomorrow & So Far Has No Bidders - The SnapNames.com monthly showcase auction for May closes Tomorrow and so far there isn’t a bid. The auction which features “Local Search and Real Estate” has about less than 100 domain names some with at no reserve, yet not one of the domains as of time of publication have bids on them. I went through the list and found a few interesting domains and placed those on top, but the whole list appears below. The star of the auction appears to be onlinemortgages.com but with a bid range of $100K-$250K ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICA Sounds The Alarm: Mark Monitor Pushes For Uniform Rapid Suspension Be Applied To .Net’s & Deadline Is Tuesday - Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association, (the “ICA”) sounded the alarm yesterday on a sleepy Mothers Day that trademark interests led by Elisa Cooper, Director of Product Marketing at MarkMonitor, are pushing for ICANN to add the URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension) to the propose .Net VeriSign contract currently opened for public comment. Ms. Cooper was the primary drafter of a proposed position statement by ICANN’s Business Constituency that advocates this move. I have for years been ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Domain Name Post That Will Have You ROFLMA - Some sophisticated domain name humor. Sometimes it’s tough being a blogger. The articles I spend the most time writing often get the least amount of traffic. So I want to urge you to read a post over at Domain Incite that not only took a while to research and write, but is as close as you can get to sophisticated Jon Stewart humor for the domain policy crowd. The 10 dumbest moments from that new TLDs Congressional hearing pokes fun at the politicians (and to a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Seattle Residents Can Now Opt Out of a Yellow Pages - Save a tree. Kill your phone book. I’ve made fun of the yellow pages — those antiquated bricks of cut trees — for many years. I even registered some domain names related to opting out of receiving the books (which for me go straight into the trash): CancelPhonebooks.com and PhonebookOptOut.com. Now residents of Seattle can opt out of receiving their Yellow Pages. Predictably, the Yellow Pages industry is fighting this in court. This means they don’t care ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Watch Out Chevy Volt Fan Sites – GM is on a Prowl - GM wins rights to web site about Chevy Volt. Last year I wrote about GM-Volt.com, a site that was getting over 75,000 visits a month. I warned that using trademarks in your domain name — even as a fan site — is treacherous ground. Indeed, GM just won a case brought before the World Intellectual Property Forum for the domain name ChevyVolt.org. GM said that the site looked like a fan site on the surface, but as you dug deeper it clearly was not: …the website ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameCheap Sued Over WhoisGuard - Company sues NameCheap after it doesn’t disclose identity behind protected whois. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again — offering whois privacy and proxy services is not free for domain name registrars. Here’s another example. Emergency Essentials, Inc, which caters to end-of-the-worlders by selling emergency and food kits, has sued NameCheap over a domain name registered using its WhoisGuard service (pdf). It’s common for someone to name a domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Bob Parsons Video Surfaces - A new Bob Parsons travel video is now online…but no animals lose their lives. A new Bob Parsons travel video has surfaced, but this one won’t be as controversial as his Zimbabwe ones. Parsons traveled to Haiti with his wife Renee to see how the $1 million he has donated since the earthquake was being used. The money was donated to Hope for Haiti, an efficient charity that spends 95% of its money directly to support those in need. Parsons posted the video on his ... read more ...
Sun 8th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Urgent: Factions Want to Impose Uniform Rapid Suspension on .Net - Business Constituency may propose new regulations for .net. The comment period for the proposed renewal of the .net registry agreement ends on May 10, yet no one has commented to date. But there will be comments by time the comment period closes, and one could be a bombshell: a proposal to apply the untested Uniform Rapid Suspension scheme to .net. Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) is a trademark rights protection mechanism that is likely to apply to new top level domain ... read more ...
Sat 7th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
OrangeJuice.com Goes To Auction At NameJet.com At No Reserve: Quick Poll How Much Will It Sell For? - The domain name OrangeJuice.com has been placed into auction at NameJet.com at no reserve by its original registrant. The domain was first registered  back in November 1996, by Michael Moses. NameJet is carrying a banner on top of the site advertising the sale. The back order deadline is May 21, at 11PM EST and as of publication there are 312 back orders on the domain and it will be quite interesting to where it will end up. Its rare to see a domain of this quality put up at a no reserve auction ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo.com Takes No Prisoners as POW.com Sells For $75,000 - Sedo.com has just brokered the sale of the one of the most recognizable three letter domains POW.com for $75,000 Frank Aiello brokered the domain on behalf of Sedo Congrats to the buyer and seller and Sedo   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Fri 6th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
You Think Discount Liquor Is Too Generic To Get Trademark Protection? Tell That To The 3 Stores That Had To Change Names - While we typically spend our time chatting about online trademark issues, I couldn’t help but notice a case involving brick and mortar liquor stores which were made to change their name based off a state trademark on the term “Discount Liquor” Make that three liquor stores that were made to change there name because one company has a trademark on the term “Discount Liquor”. The owner of Wisconsin’s “Discount Liquor” filed a lawsuit against Vliet Discount Liquor, claiming that the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICA: Department Of Commerce Says GAC Should Be Satisfied Before New gTLD Launch - According to Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association who attended the Global Internet Governance workshop held at American University in Washington today, the Assistant Secretary for the United States Department of Commerce,  Larry Strickling in his keynote luncheon speech said: “I don’t see how new gTLDs can be approved in Singapore if the GAC isn’t satisfied that its concerns have been fully addressed”. According to Mr. Corwin account of the speech: “That statement, echoing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rick Schwartz Buys Deathers.com from Mike Mann - Schwartz buys domain name related to Osama bin Laden’s death. Now that the “birthers” conspiracy theory of Barrack Obama not being born in the U.S. has hopefully been put to rest (seriously, it should have been put to rest a couple years ago), here come the “Deathers”. Deathers believe that Osama bin Laden didn’t really die in the raid this week. Seriously. Out of curiousity I looked up who owns the domain name Deathers.com and was surprised to see “Domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
EuroDNS and ICANN Trade Jabs - Popular European domain registrar and ICANN continue to spar over Facebok.com. Following a notice of breach sent by ICANN to EuroDNS, the two companies have traded jabs in correspondence. On April 25 EuroDNS CEO Xavier Buck sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN explaining why it had not transferred the domain name Facebok.com, which was lost in a UDRP case. Buck expressed disappointment that ICANN sent the breach notice that publicly “put under question” EuroDNS’ reputation. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy’s Home Page Through a Years - Go Daddy home page past and present. I was doing some research on DomainTools recently when I came across thumbnails of the GoDaddy.com home page going back to 2004. It tells and interesting story; seeing the thumbnails right next to each other shows how the site became incredibly cluttered from 2005-2009 before “opening” up again. As a point of reference, here’s GoDaddy.com a few weeks ago: Here’s the home page at the height of cluttered-ness in 2005-2006: Yikes! In ... read more ...
Thu 5th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Marchex Reports: Revenue, Profits & Stock Price Up & Sells Almost $2M in Domains In 1st Quarter - It’s a busy day for publicly traded domain related companies as Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX) also reported its results for the quarter ended March 31, 2011 today after the market closed. Its the third company in our Domain Stock Index to report today and like QuinStreet and Demand Media, Wall Street liked Marchex’s report and the stock traded up over 6% in after hours trading. Here are the highlights: First Quarter 2011 Consolidated Financial Results: Revenue was $29.1 million for the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Demand Media Reports: Revenue Up 48%; Registrar Revenue Up 18%: Stock adult Over 15% - Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE:DMD) reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2011 after the Market closed today. The market loved the report as shares soared up over 15% to $19 a share after hours. The stock is now trading well above the bottom we called at $13.99 back on April 25th. Here the highlights: “We reported better-than-expected results in Q1 2011, driven primarily by continued momentum from our owned and operated sites,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and ... read more ...