Monthly Archives: May 2012

Fri 11th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign releases some-more trade information about unregistered domains - .com and .net registry provides added detail about NXD traffic. VeriSign has enhanced its DomainScore tool to provide more insight into the traffic unregistered domains receive. DomainScore provides a relative score for the amount of traffic an unregistered domain name receives. But this so-called “NXD” traffic doesn’t qualify the type of traffic very well. That’s part of the reason people complain that they register a domain with a high score based on VeriSign’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Marchex successfully defends geo domain name in UDRP - Panel rules company can keep Norcross.com domain name. Marchex has successfully defended the domain name Norcross.com in a UDRP with the help of domain name attorney John Berryhill. Marchex acquired the domain when it bought Yun Ye’s Ultimate Search portfolio. Norcross is a suburb of Atlanta and the parked page at Norcross.com has shown links related to Georgia, hotels, etc. The complainant, Norcross Corporation, sells viscosity equipment. While I’ll applaud ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Overstock.com: We’d still unequivocally like O.com - Overstock.com pleads for single letter .com domains in VeriSign contract renewal. For many years Overstock.com has had an obsession. An obsession with getting the domain name O.com. As you may know, there are only three one letter .com domains ever registered: q.com, x.com, and z.com. These were registered (and grandfathered) prior to a restriction on one character .com domains being put in place. Since then, Overstock.com has done everything possible to angle itself ... read more ...
Thu 10th May 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Publicly Traded NCCGroup Announces It Has Applied For The New gTLD: .Secure - The Nccgroup a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange (NCC) has announced it has applied for the new gTLD .Secure. under its subsidiary Artemis Nccgroup currently owns and operates Escrow UK among other services and according to its most recent financial report generated in the first 10 months of the financial year, £72.0m. The NccGroup according to its site provides “business critical IT assurance and protection to over 15,000 organizations worldwide, including 94 out of the 100 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Western Digital Buys WD.com - Western Digital appears to have recently bought the domain name WD.com in the past month. According to DomainTools.com the domain WD.com was purchased in The domain was previously registered to the law firm Greenberg and Lieberman, LLC. Looks like the domain sold around April 16th. Western Digital already owned the domain name WDC.com so they upgraded from a three letter to a two letter .com. The domain name WD.com was first registered back in 1994 by Western Design and stayed in their possession ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
E L James Author Of The 3 Best Selling Books Didn’t Spent The Extra $60 To Register Matching Domains - If you check out iTunes right now under best selling books you will see the top 3 best sellers are all by the author E L James. The 3 best sellers are transcending into pop culture phenomenon status. The trilogy of books are: Fifty Shades of Grey Fifty Shades Darker Fifty Shades Freed. The books have quite a bit of erotic sex in them. The first book, Fifty Shades of Grey was covered by the folks over at Saturday Night Live this past weekend. The Internet has been buzzing about who is going to star ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tasting.com Sells For $20K On NameJet.com - The domain name Tasting.com sold for $20,100 today on NameJet.com There were 216 bidders in the auction with 5 willing to pay $10K or more for the domain. The winning bidder Id was: wonderwgq The domain name committed.com which was a free drop domain sold on Namejet.com for $8,966 A few other auctions from NameJet.com: PersonalinjuryLawFirm.com sold for $7,550 CherryhillNJ.com $3,988 CivilUnions.com sold for $3,400 buddhists.com Sold for $3,304 Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co’s Juan Diego Calle responds to anti-domainer allegations - .Co founder explains his opinion on domainers and cybersquatters. There was a bit of a blogstorm earlier today about the video of Juan Deigo Calle and Loic Le Meur, founder of the LeWeb conference announcing LeWeb was changing its domain to LeWeb.co. There are two people in the video, and both have differing viewpoints on some issues. But because this wasn’t an interview on Fox, they weren’t debating. I still don’t see the big uproar over what Calle said. He ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pepper.com.au eliminated in weird case - Who actually owns this domain? A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel has ordered the domain name Pepper.com.au be transferred to Pepper Australia Pty Ltd, a home loan company. The case was filed under .au Dispute Resolution Policy, which is different from the standard UDRP. Compared to UDRP, the .au policy is more lax on proving rights in a mark. It also requires only bad faith registration or use, not bad faith registration and use. That said, how ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LeWeb discussion switches from .net to .co - Big European tech conference changes web site to LeWeb.co. LeWeb, a large European tech conference, has jumped on the .co bandwagon. The company just changed its web address — and its logo — to LeWeb.co. The video below features .co founder Juan Deigo Calle discussing the change with LeWeb. (It’s actually rather entertaining.) LeWeb previously used LeWeb.net as its web address. Last year LeWeb tried to get LeWeb.com through a UDRP filing at World Intellectual ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google wants to obvious creation online ads social - Company files two patent applications for making online ads social. Google has filed two patent applications related to social interactions with online advertisements. The applications, 20120116871 and 20120116867 (pdf), were filed in November and just published today. Both are titled “Social Overlays On Ads”. The patent applications describe systems in which social overlays are placed on ads. For example, an ad my show how many people in your particular Google+ ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ConnectedWorld.com UDRP challenged in court - Case filed in Arizona to halt transfer of domain name. A Texas man has filed a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief to halt the transfer of ConnectedWorld.com, a domain name he lost in a recent UDRP decision. In the suit (pdf), Jeffrey Smith claims he has been working on a social network for eldercare since 2008. When the domain name ConnectedWorld.com came up for auction last year, he paid $7,100 to acquire the domain name. Earlier this year, Specialty Publishing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jewelry.co gets $24,000 bid on Sedo - .Co domain gets a big bid and other notable Sedo domain auctions. Here are some Sedo auctions worth checking out. The owner of Jewelry.co has sent the domain name to auction after receiving a $24,000 offer. The auction ends May 12. Crackon.com also has a strong bid of $11,500. The auction for Crackon.com ends May 15. Another interesting auction is for RealityWife.com. The site used to be a porn site. When it was active in 2007 and 2008 the site had revenue of over ... read more ...
Wed 9th May 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tucows Has Record Quarter For Domain Name Sales & For Sales Of $10K or More - I just read through the earning call transcript that Tucows held yesterday after the released their earnings and found a few interesting facts and figures. On the call Tucows CEO Elliot Noss said that : Q1 was a record quarter for individual domain sales from our portfolio, with sales of gems being especially strong. “Revenue increased 61% year-over-year. “On previous calls I have discussed the success of our efforts to increase the average selling price of brandables and gems, and we saw this ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Zynga Sues Over “Ville” - It appears Zynga believes it owns the exclusive right to any game ending in the term: “Ville” According to Gameranx.com,  Zygna filed a federal law suit last Friday against Kobojo the maker of the game, PyramidVille. Zynga says in their complaint: “Facebook users are likely to believe, erroneously, that PYRAMIDVILLE is a member of Zynga’s ‘VILLE Family of Games,” In a statement Zynga said: “Zynga’s “Ville” family includes many well-known games, including FarmVille, CityVille ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
eLeader.EU WINS The UDRP On eLeader.com: “The Fact The Trademark Registration Was Granted After The Domain Name Was Registered Does Not Prevent A Finding Of Confusing Similar” - Yesterday we wrote about a UDRP being filed by the owner eLeader.eu against eLeader.com. However the case was actually decided yesterday by the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC) who awarded the domain name to the owner of eLeader.eu which is a company out of Poland. Its another decision in my opinion one in which the panel decided it was going to give the domain to the TM holder and then found a way to hand it over saying that: “”” The fact that the registration of this trademark was granted after ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICM Responds To The Manwin Anti-Trust Amended Complaint On .XXX & Asks The Court To Dismiss It Again - ICM filed a motion to dismiss Manwin’s complaint for Anti-Trust on the .XXX extension for a second time yesterday. (You can read the motion to dismiss again here). Here are some of the highlights of the Motion to Dismiss: “”Even though it is their second try, Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint fails to state a claim and should be dismissed.” “The Amend Complaint is (like the original Complaint) nothing more than a transparent attempt to use the antitrust laws to eliminate a new internet ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Vertical Axis Puts Attorney.com Up For Sale With A Minimum Reserve Price of $2.25 million - Vertical Axis Inc is selling the category killer domain name Attorney.com The domain is under exclusive brokerage DomainHoldings.com with a  minimum reserve price for the name at $2.25 million. According to a press release out this morning: “Legal is among the more competitive verticals with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on online advertising annually,” Domain Holdings CEO Jason Boshoff said. “Owning this name provides any entity with interests in the space with a unique positioning ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo.com Sells Apps.net For $32K & W.TO For $52K - Two interesting sales from Sedo this morning The domain name Apps.net just sold for 24,100 Euro’s or about $31,330. The seller was Branchenpresse Verlag GmbH, and the buyer is showing as the brand protection company Marksman, no doubt on behalf of a client. The other interesting sale today is the single letter domain name of W.TO which just sold for a whopping $53K. Back in February the domain name K.TO sold for $40K .To is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of the island kingdom ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN “Targeting” May 22 As Re-opening Of TAS: Big Reveal Still Unknown But Prague Looks Likely - According to a statement issued overnight, ICANN is “targeting 22 May 2012 as the intended reopening date for the TLD Application System.” “It is anticipated that the system would remain open for five business days and close on 30 May. This takes account of the 28 May Memorial Day holiday in the United States.” “We have met our commitment to provide notice to all users on or before 8 May 2012 by sending out notifications today.””The large majority of users are unaffected by the glitch.” “”Even ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNW Interview: Go Daddy relates for .godaddy and dual other TLDs - Warren Adelman discloses new TLD applications and discusses the challenges of offering more domain choices to customers. Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, has applied for three top level domains, CEO Warren Adelman told Domain Name Wire today. (News of the applications was first reported by Paul Sloan at CNET). The company has applied for its own .brand domain .godaddy, as well as two additional top level domains (TLD). That’s a lot less than ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
General Counsel Christine Jones withdrawal Go Daddy - A long time fixture at Go Daddy is moving on. Christine Jones, General Counsel Corporate Secretary for Go Daddy, will leave the company Friday after 10 years. Jones managed all legal affairs for the company and frequently represented the company as a witness at congressional hearings. She was a key player at the company and the industry given her role in lobbying in Washington. She even had a cameo in GoDaddy’s 2009 “enhancement” Super Bowl commercial. During ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“If we don’t sell me your domain for $2,000, I’ll record a UDRP” - Company that makes UDRP threat found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. “If you don’t sell me your domain for $2,000, I’ll file a UDRP against the domain name.” That’s effectively what a United Kingdom company threatened against the owner of the domain name edgePOS.com, according to the findings of a recent UDRP decision. John Henderson (Holdings) filed a UDRP complaint against Xiaodong Zhang of Austin, Texas, over the domain name. Zhang said he registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN refunds thought was a reticent move - Offering an additional $5,000 refund just draws more attention to ICANN’s top level domain system failure. ICANN’s offer to refund 100% of applicant fees if new gTLD applicants pull their applications was a dumb move. First, this offer isn’t a big deal. It’s an offer of $5,000 more (just 3%) than the refund schedule previously in place offered if you withdrew your application before names were revealed. Second, will this offer actually prompt people to recall ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
12 engaging finish user domain sales from a past week - These domain names will be put to goo use. DNW’s weekly end user sale report is back. Most notable on this week’s list are purchases by a publicly traded REIT as well as Ziff Davis. All sales took place at Afternic except RoyalKey.com at Sedo. Austin based student housing REIT American Campus Communities bought AvalonHeights.com for $6,200 for one of its apartment complexes. Florida home builder Neal Communities paid $1,395 for LiveGrand.com. That’s a great ... read more ...