Author Archives: DomainNameWire

About DomainNameWire

Domain Name Wire is a blog that deals with the domain name sector. The blog covers a range of domain related topics ranging from issues concerning expiring domains, monetization, domain registries and registrars, ICANN, policy, law etc. The blog began in March, 2005, after Mr. Allemann had dropped out of meetings to become involved in domain portfolio company, iREIT. The project began as a hobby to keep him involved in the domaining business, and then became his full-time business.

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 ...
Thu 10th May 2012
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 ...
 
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
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
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
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
.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 ...
Wed 9th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jay-Z files domain dispute - Entertainer files complaint about JayZGroup.com. Rapper and producer Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z, has filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) over the domain name JayZGroup.com. The domain name is currently registered to someone in Hazel Park, Michigan. The current registration dates to 2009, but the domain was previously registered and then expired. Oddly, the web site features the works of various unrelated artists. This is ... 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 ...
 
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
“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
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
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 ...
Tue 8th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Nxt discussion heads to London subsequent month - .Nxt moves across the pond. The third .Nxt conference covering issues related to new top level domains takes place June 20-22 at Victoria Park Plaza in London. I caught up with show founder Kieren McCarthy yesterday to discuss his latest show. After holding two conferences in San Francisco, McCarthy said a number of interested attendees asked him to hold a show in Europe. With ICANN holding a meeting in Prague starting June 24, McCarthy felt that a stop of in London ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Us whois remoteness is alive and good if we use Mark Monitor - Mark Monitor helps keep .us domain registration records private. It’s been years since the average consumer could register a .us domain name using whois privacy, thanks to a decision by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. But apparently if you’re a big brand you can still do it. A company recently registered a slew of domain names related to dairy products, including BadDairy.com, DairyBad.com, and Bad-Dairy.com. Whomever registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media invests $18 million in new TLDs - That’s a whole lotta top level domains. [Updated with comment from Demand Media and from investor call] Demand Media, parent company of eNom, announced today that it has invested $18 million into new top level domain names. It’s not clear if this is for application fees only: In April 2012, Demand Media invested $18 million in pursuit of its generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) initiative, which it believes represents a complementary strategic growth opportunity ... read more ...
Mon 7th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Escrow.com rigourously launches attorney tool - Broker tool released to all Escrow.com customers. I’m a bit behind because of a hosting change at the end of last week, but the latest news from Escrow.com is worth writing about even a couple days late. Escrow.com formally launched its broker tool last week. I wrote about this tool back in January when it was in limited release. The new offering allows brokers to be involved with transactions at Escrow.com. The broker can set up the escrow transaction and also ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts and Minds + Machines updates on TAS and new TLDs - Interesting posts from the perspective of new TLD applicants. The new TLD delay continues and ICANN just released the total number of applications received so far (over 2,000). So what does this mean for new TLD applicants? Two of the largest recently published blog posts that shed some light on it. First, eNom founder Paul Stahura (now with new TLD applicant Donuts Inc) wrote about the application glitch and how it could affect applications. Donuts saw one other ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Despair.net sues to retard send to Despair, Inc. - Now that’s demotivating. The owner of the domain name Despair.net has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Despair, Inc., maker of “demotivational” products, to block a UDRP decision on the domain name. Despair, Inc. filed a UDRP against the despair.net domain name on March 20. The case was weak, but the registrant (Darren L. Dittrich) of the domain name apparently didn’t receive notice of the dispute until after the decision was handed down. Since Dittrich didn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another 3 minute .xxx domain name mislaid in UDRP - BGZ.xxx given to bank in Poland. .xxx UDRP cases present some interesting scenarios that are not common amongst other top level domains. For example, if the .xxx domain name at issue is just three letters and it doesn’t resolve, how do you prove that it was registered in bad faith? How can the complainant prove that it was the intended “victim” of the registration? This was first brought up in a case for HEB.xxx. HEB.xxx didn’t resolve, so it would have been ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why BuyDomains’ lawsuit over FACI.com creates sense - Lawsuit over FACI.com is about more than just a single domain name. In April I wrote about how a WIPO panel “stole” FACI.com from BuyDomains (NameMedia) in a faulty UDRP decision. I also mentioned that I hoped BuyDomains would turn to the courts to over the issue. On Friday George Kirikos noticed that the company did indeed turn to the courts, filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts. The suit is fairly bread-and-butter for declaratory and injunctive relief. NameMedia ... read more ...
Sat 5th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
And…we’re back! - I just switched hosting providers over the past 48 hours. Transferring the Domain Name Wire database from one host to another, plus the propagation of the new name servers, caused some lag time between sites. As a result, a handful of comments submitted over the previous 36 hours are lost. I could take an ICANN -like TAS approach and go through the logs to find all of the missing comments. But then I’d have to take the site down for a couple months while I did this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN’s $350 million windfall - ICANN has already collected $350 million in new TLD application fees. And that number will grow. One of the mysteries of ICANN’s new top level domain process is why it’s been so shy about releasing the total number of applications received so far. It released the number of application system registered users, but not the number of applications. That just changed: ICANN announced it had 2,091 applications completed or in progress when it took the application system ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google wants to obvious associated links functionality - Lookout, YARPP. Are you a blogger that uses Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)? There are a lot of similar plugins (hence the funny name). But Google apparently thinks it’s novel, as the company has filed a patent application (pdf) for precisely this. United States patent application 20120109932, titled “Related Links”, covers the process of identifying keywords within an article and then displaying related articles (or searches) based on those keywords. In ... read more ...
Thu 3rd May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Should ICANN can digital archery? - Given the latest data, ICANN should consider changing how it batches new TLDs. With 1,268 registered users for ICANN’s new top level domain application system, it’s clear there will be over 1,000 unique top level domains going through the new TLD process. That means we’ll have “batching“, where approximately 500 domains at a time go through the full evaluation and addition to the root. The current plan for determining which 500 applications go into each ... read more ...