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.

Wed 11th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Spotify final Spotify ripping site be taken down - Spotify files complaint over SpotifyRip.com. Online music phenomenon Spotify has filed a complaint in an effort to take down a web site that explains how to rip music from its service. The company filed the complaint against SpotifyRip.com with World Intellectual Property Organization under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). UDRP is a policy for handling cybersquatting complaints, but it’s probably the fastest route for the company to take ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
14 finish user domain buys from a past week - Wyndham Hotels among end users to buy domains last week. Here are 14 end user domain purchases from the past week. All sales are at Afternic unless otherwise noted. A California company, iBots LLC, bought iBots.com for $5,000. The soon-to-launch company will offer marketing automation software. Wyndham Hotels, which owns a chain called Night Hotels, bought NightHotels.com for $1,500 at Sedo. A company called International Gaming Solutions in Romania bought IGSonline.com ... read more ...
 
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Jim Grace jumps from DomainSponsor to Domain Holdings - Long time DomainSponsor account manager moves to Domain Holdings. A well known face (and mustache) in the domain industry is changing jobs. Jim Grace has left Oversee.net, parent company of DomainSponsor, after over seven years. He will be joining Domain Holdings as Director of Monetization. Grace will be responsible for growing the company’s Domain Power monetization platform. Domain Holdings was founded by long time domainer Chad Folkening as well as John Ferber, ... read more ...
Tue 10th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Neustar launches new .US branding debate “Kickstart America” - Company pitches .US domains to small businesses. Neustar, the registry for the .us country code domain name, has launched a new marketing strategy today aimed at small businesses. As part of the new branding the company has relaunched About.us and created a new URL at KickstartAmerica.us (which just forwards to a campaign page on About.us). The campaign page explains how small businesses can “Get online easier” with the .US Small Business Toolkit, which is really ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy gets obvious for “Tools for redirecting to a book website” - Go Daddy gets another patent. Go Daddy Operating Company, LLC has been granted U.S. patent number 8,156,180 for “Tools for redirecting to a book website”. I wrote about this patent application when it was published last year. It describes a number of methods that someone could be redirected to a web site specific to a book, such as entering the ISBN for the book. Go Daddy’s interest in the idea is that it could sell more domain names and services to authors. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Event planner sues ICANN over San Francisco gala - Company says it had a contract with ICANN to plan gala. San Francisco event planning company Corporate Concepts (warning: music on home page) has sued ICANN (pdf), saying the non-profit breached a contract to run the gala at its San Francisco meeting last March. Corporate Concepts alleges that it had a contract with ICANN to run the gala, for which it was to receive a $40,000 event management fee. The company had been working with a representative of The San Francisco ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy sole 42,321 aftermarket domains final month - Company continues to churn out aftermarket sales including a couple for six figures. I’m a bit behind checking in on GoDaddy’s auction sales report for last month. But it was a great month for the service. In total it sold 42,321 domains, headlined by the developed site psoriasis.com at $350,000. In second was AFW.com for $125,000, setting a pretty sturdy bar for a good three letter .com domain. App.me sold for $50,000 as well. As usual, sales were split fairly ... read more ...
Mon 9th April 2012
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Bain & Company takes quarrel with BainConsultingGroup.com owners to court - Consulting firm sues man for copyright and trademark infringement of Bain name. Bain Company, one of the world’s most prestigious management consulting firms and a former employer of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is taking a Colorado man to court over his use of the “Bain Consulting” name and the domain name BainConsultingGroup.com. According to Bain (pdf), it became aware of Jim Woods’ registration of BainConsultingGroup.com in February. The domain ... read more ...
 
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JustinTV.com sole for $32,500 on eBay and only got strike with a UDRP - Buyer may learn an expensive lesson. In February a Chile man bought the domain name JustinTV.com for $32,500 on eBay. JustinTV.com is, of course, often mistakenly typed in by people looking for the popular live TV site Justin.tv. This wasn’t a problem for the seller of the domain. In his eBay listing he said his name was Justin and he registered the domain in 1999. But he also noted that the domain receives 64,000 unique visitors per week. There’s a simple explanation ... read more ...
Sun 8th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
No .Facebook and .Pepsi? - Spokesperson tells AdAge that the company isn’t apply for .Facebook TLD. According to an article just published by AdAge, you shouldn’t expect Facebook to apply for .Facebook nor should you expect to navigate to .pepsi any time soon. Of course, it’s entirely possible that AdAge just didn’t talk to the right person within the companies. A Facebook spokesperson told AdAge that the company wasn’t apply for .Facebook, but you never know. Pepsi shed some light ... read more ...
Fri 6th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Tools files preemptive lawsuit over copyright claims and the trademark - Domain Tools files lawsuit for declaratory relief on copyright and trademark issues. Domain Tools, LLC has filed suit (pdf) against a New Jersey man after he threatened to file a lawsuit against it and try to get its trademark for “Domain Tools” overturned. The suit was filed against Russ Smith, owner of Consumer.net and Network-Tools.com, in U.S. District Court in Washington late last month. According to the suit, Smith had sent a draft lawsuit to DomainTools ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD hopefuls play heading games in EU, too - French lawyer with ICANN, NAF, and WIPO connections helps new TLD applicants file trademarks for prospective top level domains. I’ve chronicled many of the attempts by new gTLD hopefuls to “frontrun” trademarks for new TLDs in the United States. Here are 115 examples. But that’s just in the U.S. system. And it’s not a huge threat since the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is rejecting these applications. Yet there’s some trademarking activity in the European ... read more ...
Thu 5th April 2012
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Patent goblin goes after GoDaddy in latest suit - GoDaddy joins the likes of Google and Yahoo as defendants in cloud storage patent troll lawsuits. A non-practicing entity, a.k.a. patent troll, has filed a lawsuit against GoDaddy for allegedly infringing some of its cloud storage patents. The suit, filed yesterday in Federal District Court in Texas, claims that GoDaddy infringed two of Titanide Ventures, LLC’s patents (pdf). It claims that GoDaddy’s Online File Storage and Photo Album violate U.S. patents 6,714,968 ... read more ...
Wed 4th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain Name Wire stories for March - A possible merger and DVD.com purchase were most popular stories of March. Here are the top five stories on Domain Name Wire for the month of March. 1. American Airlines merger with U.S. Airways is a go, suggest domain registrations – a company used Mark Monitor to register a number of specific domain names suggesting a merger between U.S. Airways and American Airlines (AMR). U.S. Airways later claimed responsibility for the registrations, but said they were “just ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Check out these 16 finish user domain buys from a past week - From cocktails to public advocacy, here are 16 recent end user domain sales. Here are 16 end user sales that took place through Afternic and Sedo over the past week. All sales were at Afternic unless noted as Sedo. Lakewood Weightloss and Wellness bought NoDiabetes.com for $1,888. Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. bought Cloud-Computer.org for $1,400. Wine-a-Rita, which sells kits for wine margaritas, bought SimpleCocktails.com for $1,300. Here’s an interesting one. Container ... read more ...
 
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Warner Bros. fails to gank domain for The Gangster Squad movie - Arbitration panel rules against movie studio for domain for upcoming film release. Warner Bros. is releasing The Gangster Squad, starring Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, this coming October. But it’s missing a key ingredient: the domain name TheGangsterSquad.com. The movie studio filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum to try to get the domain name but failed to show trademark rights in the domain. The history of the name is actually quite ... read more ...
Tue 3rd April 2012
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GoDaddy now offers giveaway domain appraisals, but… - GoDaddy domain appraisals now free. But you might get what you pay for. GoDaddy recently started offering free computer generated domain name appraisals. But before you get too excited, here are the results of a test I ran yesterday: Hmm. I don’t think the algorithm is quite right. For comparison, here are the computer generated estimates for these domains from Estibot: IceCream.com $920,000 Money.com $5.8M ReallyBadDomain.com $0 California.com $1.7M Austin.com ... read more ...
 
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Google gets RealTimeBidding.com domain [Updated] - Google gets domain name for a key online advertising term. With the Ad-Tech conference kicking off this morning in San Francisco, it’s only fitting to report this morning that Google has acquired the domain name RealTimeBidding.com. For those not in the online advertising industry, real time bidding allows advertisers to bid on advertising one impression at a time, often based on audience data. The domain name RealTimeBidding.com has an interesting history. It was ... read more ...
 
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NameCheap joins Afternic DLS network - Registrar with close to 3 million domains starts syndicating Afternic listings. Domainers who sell their domains on Afternic DLS Premium have a higher chance of sales thanks to a new member of the distribution network: NameCheap. Here’s how your domains will look when a NameCheap customer searches for the exact match: This is a pretty good implementation, although it would be nice if hovering over the “premium” logo explained what “premium” means. In other ... read more ...
Mon 2nd April 2012
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iPad box builder TheSnugg.com loses dead-on-arrival domain dispute - Company filed trademark application last year; domain was registered in 1999. iPad case maker TheSnugg.com just wasted some money in a domain dispute. It filed a case against the owner of Snugg.com. You’ll get a chuckle out of the company’s contentions in its UDRP complaint: 2. Complainant registered the SNUGG mark (Reg. No. 4,075,899 filed May 17, 2011; registered December 27, 2011) through the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”); 3. ... read more ...
 
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First Brannans.com auction now live - Clements brothers start first auction on new site. Brothers David and Toby Clements have started their first ever auction on new siteBrannans.com. Toby previously lead the auction efforts for Rick Latona. Brannans.com uses the same auction provider, Proxibid, that Latona originally used. The auction features 185 domains selected from over 20,000 submissions. Reserve prices range from $300 to $3 million, but half of the domains are under $5,000 and a third of the domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
How ICANN should do the large “reveal” - Oooh, I’m soooo excited. Today ICANN announced that it has set April 30 as the date it plans to reveal all of the applicants for new top level domain names. This means that all of the applicants for potentially conflicting strings, along with people like Kevin Murphy and me, will be geeking out on the ICANN web site that Monday. But ICANN should really have some fun with this. After all, it made the puzzling decision to keep the public updated on how many registrants ... read more ...
Sun 1st April 2012
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Francois Carrillo’s ZUT.com strike with UDRP - Another day, another UDRP on a three letter domain name. Sadly, this isn’t an April Fools’ joke. Francois Carrillo, who runs Domaining.com, has just been hit with a UDRP for the domain name Zut.com. The complainant is Interbasic Holding S.A., which has a perfume line called Zut. I think the defense should be pretty straightforward for Carrillo. After all, the guy runs an auction site dedicated solely to three and four letter domain names like zut.com, jef.com, ... read more ...
Fri 30th March 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Amazon domain registrations advise B2B or production supply pull [Updated] - Domains related to lab supplies and “small parts” suggest manufacturing or B2B play. I buy just about all electronics for my business on Amazon: monitors, laptops, even occasional specialty equipment costing thousands of dollars. Seriously, you can buy just about anything on the site. Now it appears Amazon may be gearing up for a serious B2B or manufacturing play. Check out these domain registrations from March 28: amazon-supplies.com amazon-supply.com amazonequipmentsupplies.com amazonequipmentsupply.com amazonindustrialsupplies.com amazonlabsupplies.com amazonlabsupply.com amazonscientificsupplies.com amazonscientificsupply.com amazonsupplies.net amazonsupply-smallparts.com amazonsupply.net amazonsupplyitems.com amazonsupplypart.com amazonsupplyparts.com amazonsupplysmallparts.com smallparts-amazonsupply.com smallpartsamazonsupply.com suppliesamazon.com supplyamazon.com [Update ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Confirmed: Netflix buys DVD.com - Netflix buys DVD.com domain name. [Update: Netflix has confirmed its purchase of DVD.com. A spokesperson tells Domain Name Wire “Netflix cares about keeping DVD healthy, and this is just one small investment in keeping DVD healthy.”] The nameservers and registrant information for DVD.com just changed. The domain now forwards to DVD.netflix.com, signalling that Netflix may have purchased the domain. Sometime around March 25 the nameservers changed from worldnic.com ... read more ...