Monthly Archives: July 2011

Fri 22nd July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Victor Pitts Returns to Host Domain Masters Radio Show - Domain Masters radio show returns with Victor Pitts back as host. It’s baaaack. WebmasterRadio.fm’s Domain Masters radio show is coming back with a familiar face as host. Victor Pitts will return to host the program that has been online since 2004 and produced 243 episodes. It was originally hosted by Moniker founder Monte Cahn, who handed over much of the hosting responsibilities to Victor Pitts until Pitts left the company. Pitts was then replaced by “Chef” ... read more ...
Thu 21st July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Aerospace.com Bidding Tops $75K With 1 Day To Go At NameJet.com, But Still Hasn’t Hit Its “Low Reserve” - The domain name Aerospace.com is at auction at NameJet.com ends tomorrow and the bids have just topped $75K. The current high bid as time of publication is $75,100 but the high bidder is NameJet.com reserve meaning that the sellers reserve is set higher. There are 312 bidders in the auction but only 2 that have placed bids $10K or higher. I just went back to read the announcement from NameJet.com that was sent out to its customers a couple of weeks ago on some premium domain names including this ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Technorati.com Publishes Interview With FMA Head Elequa: “We Own 120K Domains Valued At Over $3 Billion” - Technorati.com has just published an interview with Thunayan Khalid al-Ghanim (also known online as Elequa) who owns Future Media Architects (FMA) a company that should be well known by all domainers for having a killer portfolio of domain names and a reputation for never selling a domain. So here is the most interesting part of the short interview for me: “”Future Media Architects (FMA) has built up a portfolio of some 120,000 domain names, valued at over $3 billion.” Wow $3 Billion,  that’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FastCompany: “Does Paying Top Dollar For Domains Still Make Sense In The Age Of Apps?” - An interesting article just popped up in FastCompany.com entitled “Does Paying Top Dollar For Domains Still Make Sense In The Age Of Apps?” “Given the increasing popularity of apps, there’s a question of whether owning the right domain name is as important as it was when the world was driven by dot-coms and browsers rather than iPhones and Android devices. In other words, if you launch an app today–say, Foursquare, for example–is it necessary to purchase Foursquare.com if the primary ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Walmart Challenges Non-Profit Over OurWalmart.org Domain Name - Company files dispute to get OURWalmart.com domain name. [UPDATE: The original story said the case was against OURWalmart.com. It was actually against OurWalmart.org, which is indeed owned by the non-profit. Additionally, WIPO has handed down a decision in favor of Wal-Mart. The story has been corrected.] Walmart has started a fight with non-profit OUR Walmart over the domain name OurWalmart.org. OUR Walmart, which stands for “Organization United for Respect at ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Warner Bros Fighting for Hangover 3 Domain Names - Movie studio goes after most obvious domain names for its next Hangover movie. Last month I wrote about how Warner Bros had registered five domain names related to the next installment in its popular Hangover series, including Hangover3movie.com, HangoverMovie3.com, Hangover-3.com, the-hangover-3.com, and theHangoverMovie3.com. I also noted that someone already owned Hangover3.com, and that I didn’t expect the company to shell out big bucks to buy the domain name. I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
R.J. Reynolds Sues eCigarette Web Sites - Tobacco company claims sites sell liquid nicotine products using their famous cigarette brands. The intellectual property holding company for R.J. Reynolds has filed two trademark lawsuits in North Carolina against online retailers selling liquid nicotine products. The suits allege that the web sites sell products bearing the images of their famous Camel and Winston marks, such as in the image to the right. The first suit is against YourECigarette.com and its owner. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
What’s .Next? - A frequent DNW reader sets in motion plans for a new TLD. In my daily perusal of U.S. trademark applications I came across another potential top level domain today: .Next (Not to be confused with the .nxt conference). More interestingly, I recognized the name of the applicant: Mansour Elseify. Elseify is a frequent reader and commenter on Domain Name Wire and owner of DomainsNext.com, a Tucows reseller that has been in business for 10 years. So I reached out to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawyers Fight Over Monte Cahn’s Laptop - Court denies temporary restraining order for Monte Cahn’s laptop. The latest legal battle in Monte Cahn v. Oversee.net et al is over a laptop. Lawyers for the defendants want to get their hands on the Moniker founder’s laptop, which they say is Oversee.net company property. They claim the laptop may include confidential emails and other information about both this case and other legal matters. The defendants filed for a temporary restraining order to get the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Irony Alert: Jillian Michaels Protests Treatment of Elephants - No joke: Go Daddy girl to protest alongside PETA in defense of circus elephants. How’s this for irony: fitness guru and GoDaddy Girl Jillian Michaels is joining with PETA to protest Ringling Bros. circus and its treatment of elephants. I’m not kidding. In case you aren’t familiar with the story, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons shot an elephant in Africa this year. It’s not the first time he’s done it, but the story went viral this time and a number of people ... read more ...
Wed 20th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Houses.com & Condo.com Are a Buyer Of Schwartz’ Property.com & Properties.com - According to a Press Release just issued, the company that owns Condo.com and Houses.com is the buyer of the domain names owned by Rick Schwartz, Property.com and Properties.com which Rick tweeted  as being sold for $4M + equity in the new venture Here is the press release: Condo.com and Houses.com, two leading online residential real estate portals, today announced the acquisition of the category domain names: Property.com and Properties.com. Property.com is well-positioned to succeed as the Company’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICM Registry Answers Hustler & Trademark Holders: You Can’t Sue Us - The ICM Registry published a white paper today  entitled .XXX Domains and Trademark Issues. The paper seems to answer  threats like the one that came from Hustler last week that seemed to indicate that trademark holders are somehow going to try to hold the ICM Registry liable for trademark infringement. Last week Hustler President Michael Klein said: The ICM registry is “prohibited from registering or selling to a third party any .XXX domain names that contain the famous Hustler trademark or ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Me Celebrates 3rd Anniversary and .Co Celebrates the 1st - Two registries are celebrating their anniversary today. The .Me Registry is 3 years old today and in a blog post, says there are 530,000 domains .Me domain names registered in 200 countries. 52.92% of all .ME registrations are based the United States; 7.68% are from the United Kingdom. 3.82% were registered in Germany 3.81% in Canada, and 3.63% in Japan. “During the Registry’s last fiscal year (July 2010-June 2011), the registration of .ME domains grew by 27%; which, according to VeriSign’s ... read more ...
 
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A Harvard Law School Professor Publishes A Study Of UDRP Decisions Involving “Fair Use” & Finds Cases Turn On Nationality - A professor from Harvard has just released a 48 page study he conducted on UDRP decision involving “Fair Use” of a trademarked term. You can download the study here (pdf) The study entitled, An Empirical Analysis of Fair Use Decisions under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy  is authored by David A. Simon a Harvard Law School professor. “For over ten years, the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) has resolved nearly 20,000 domain-name disputes brought before ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CEO Of ICM Stuart Lawley Spends 6 Minutes+ Chatting On CNN - Stuart Lawley CEO of the ICM Registry, Spent 6 minutes on CNN this morning chatting about the .XXX extension and the new gTLD program It was quite a good interview for Stuart but not so much for Pauline Chiou who conducted the interview who kept confusing the new gTLD program with .XXX leading her to ask why each .XXX domain is gojng to be so expensive at $185,000 per domain. Well Stuart quite patiently explained to Ms. Chiou the difference between a domain registration and applying to run and extension. One ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Another One Of Zuccarinis Typo’s, Qoutes.com Sells For $27K on NameJet.com - The domain name Qoutes.com sold on NameJet.com today for $27,300. This is another one of  John Zuccarinis domains that Namejet.com has been auctioning off In other NameJet.com auctions today Grover.com sold for $5,400, Shio.com sold for $3,900 and Gou.org sold for $1,600 According to my tally well over $130K of Mr. Zuccarinis have been sold on Namejet in the last week. Not sure I would pay $27k for a domain that has no value outside of typo traffic but there are a lot of millionaire that have been ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Buyer of Rick Schwartz’ Property.com and Properties.com Domain Names Revealed - Condo.com, Houses.com and now Property.com and Properties.com. The new owner of Property.com and Properties.com is very familiar with online real estate sites: it already owns Condo.com, Condos.com, and Houses.com. The buyer — which owns US Condo Exchange, LLC — was revealed today in a press release. While the release says the sales price is confidential, Rick Schwartz tweeted several weeks ago that the combined price was $4 million plus equity. Schwartz bought ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Alexander from Intrust Domains Sure Does Get Around - Yes, they must be North America’s largest spammers. Intrust Domains [intrustdomains] was aquired by epik.com (CEO Rob Monster) and the spam operation is continuing under the GoName.com brand.. The spam emails now usually come from alex@______.com in various formats with changing quotes in the message various sender addresses in an attempt to defeat the spam filters. This is a recent example… Notification for Availability of Similar Domain: We thought we would let you know that debt_______.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Power Tools Company Loses IXO.com Complaint - Three letter domain name saved by National Arbitration Forum. Here’s a follow up to a domain name dispute I wrote about last month regarding a three letter domain name. A National Arbitration Forum panel has denied the complaint for IXO.com brought by Robert Bosch GmbH, which has a line of power tools called IXO. The decision is in German, so I’m relying on Google’s translator here. But essentially the panel ruled: 1. The owner has a legitimate interest in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
National Football League Fights Over Super Bowl Web Site - NFL wants to take over Super Bowl web site. The National Football League’s lawyers may be busy trying to settle the lockout, but its lawyers have time to play games with domain names, too. The NFL just filed a domain name dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization over the domain name SuperBowlConcierge.com. The domain name is owned by Houston, Texas based EE Nation, which offers a number of travel services. SuperBowlConcierge.com is focused primarily ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Promotes Domain Names to Small Businesses - Google evangelizes web sites for small businesses. Remember all those getonline.com domain names Google registered last month? Now we know what they’re for, and it’s good news for domain name owners. Google is going state-to-state, city-to-city to help small businesses get online. They’ve teamed up with Intuit to offer a web site builder, domain name, web hosting, and Google Places listing free for a year. Right now they’re in Austin holding in-person workshops ... read more ...
Tue 19th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Yahoo Reports Earnings & Misses Again - After the market closed today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO – News)  reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011 and the news wasn’t particular good. The company reported GAAP revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs) was $1.08 billion for the second quarter of 2011, a 5% decrease from the second quarter of 2010. However earnings per diluted share increased 18%to $0.18 in the second quarter of 2011, compared to $0.15 in the second quarter of 2010. Net Income came in at $237 million, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Sedo.com Sells $755k In Domains Led By Sadara.com For $70k - Sedo.com just released its sales list for the week ending Monday July 18th. A All reportable domain sales totaled $754,616. The top seller of the week was Sadara.com at $70,800 followed by Fietsen.com at $35,000. Sadara.com is  huge sale at $70,000 Looks like it could be a bank in Qatar or an Oil company which goes by the same name. Fietsen.com another domain which seemed to fetch a nice price. Fietsen means Cycling in Dutch (thank god for Google translation) GetAHead.com sold for $18,500 we will ... read more ...
 
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Afternic.com Sells $670K In Domain Names Led By NursePractitioner.com during $36,300 - Afternic.com just released its sales for the week ending Sunday July 17th. All reportable domain sales $1k and over totaled $669,466. NursePractitioner.com led the way selling at $36,300 with Full Contact.com closely behind at $30,800 Iea.net led the way on non-com sales selling for $16,488 ChatOn.com sold for $17K Chaton is french for kitten, look at your own risk of falling in love Here is the complete list of sales:   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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MarkMonitor & Verisign Expect 1,000 – 1,500 New gTLD Applications In 1st Round With Brands Making adult 66% - Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) attended the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) USA meeting  yesterday at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC where the afternoon keynote address was by Larry Strickling, the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Administrator. You can read Mr. Corwin recap of that speech on the ICA site. However prior to the speech, Mr. Corwin reports there was a session held on the new gTLD program at which Fred Felman of Mark Monitor spoke ... read more ...