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.

Tue 25th October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Software Company Sues Research in Motion Over Blackberry BBX Name - New Mexico company claims trademark infringement over BBX name. Software company BASIS International Ltd yesterday filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Blackberry maker Research in Motion over the company’s choice of name for its new Blackberry operating system, following up on a legal threat it made last week. Research in Motion announced its next generation Blackberry BBX last week, and BASIS says it immediately began receiving confusing inquiries from its customers. ... read more ...
 
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ProTrada is a Domain Buyer’s Dashboard - Tool helps domain investors win domain auctions at lower prices. Last week at TRAFFIC I had a chance to sit down with the team behind ProTrada, a (beta) system for buying domain names across multiple platforms. The idea is simple: find the best domain names available on exchanges and expired domain sites and get them for the lowest possible price. The basic features of ProTrada are nothing new; it’s how they’re all brought together that makes this a killer application. ... read more ...
 
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How to Add Your Domains to SedoMLS - A simple guide to take advantage of Sedo’s new integration with Moniker. Thousands of domainers can now add their domains to SedoMLS Premium thanks to the company’s new agreement with Moniker. With SedoMLS Premium you can list your domains across Sedo’s network of partner sites (including in the registration path at many registrars) and they can be instantly purchased and transferred. I just went through the process of adding a couple domains to MLS. It’s ... read more ...
Mon 24th October 2011
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How Secure is a .Secure Trademark Application? - Company that filed .secure trademark application is now apparently using it in commerce. People will try to game the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office all day long. In August I wrote about how Asif LLC applied for the .secure trademark. It later applied for .bank. Now Asif alleges actual use of the term in commerce. How did the company allege it’s using the top level domain .secure in commerce? Well, first of all it isn’t claiming it’s a TLD. It says it wants ... read more ...
 
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Minnesota Lawyer Magazine Claims MinnesotaLawyer.com Violates Its Trademark - The challenges of a descriptive trademark. The Dolan Company, owner of Minnesota Lawyer Magazine, is claiming that MinnesotaLawyer.com is violating its trademark. MinnesotaLawyer.com is maintained by Minnesota lawyer Aaron Hall. His law firm Twin Cities Law Firm, LLC also owns MinnesotaAttorney.com. Dolan company sent him a cease desist letter (pdf). Hall says he has a right to blog on the web site. In a press release, he provides a comparison: This is like a company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Web.com Plans .Web Top Level Domain - Company plans to apply for .web and says no one else should be allowed to get the TLD. Publicly traded Web.com plans to apply for the .web top level domain name and says no one else should be allowed to apply for the TLD due to its trademarks. The company has a pre-reservation form up on its web site and just filed a trademark application for the name. This is the first I’ve heard of the company’s plans, although its trademark application says it has been using ... read more ...
 
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ClickVentures Solidifies Cookies.com and PartySupplies.com Brands with Domain Purchases - PartySupply.com and CookieGifts.com forward to category-defining domain names. ClickVentures, the company behind Cookies.com and PartySupplies.com, continues to snap up category killer domain names as it builds out its web empire. The company, led by Drew Sharma, made two big domain purchases this summer to solidify its brands. First, it picked up PartySupply.com. This will complement its PartySupplies.com web site. It bought the latter domain for $360,000 in 2010. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
“Weird Al” Yankovic: 20-30% of Traffic is Misspelled - How do people misspell weird? Here’s an interesting tidbit from Spin Magazine’s recent interview with “Weird Al” Yankovic. Spin asked Weird Al how often people misspell his name wierd (with the i and e reversed). He responded: Quite a few. In fact, I believe we still have that spelling registered as a domain name. Scarily enough, I checked the traffic once, and 20 to 30 percent of traffic to WeirdAl.com is people searching for it with the incorrect spelling. Now ... read more ...
 
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.XXX Has Grossed $10 Million Already [Updated] - ICM Registry has already pocketed 8 figures from .xxx. .XXX Registry ICM Registry has already taken in $10 million for the .xxx launch…and general availability hasn’t even started. ICM Registry has received 42,000 applications for .xxx domain names with just five days remaining in the sunrise period. At an average application fee of $200 this means registrants have already forked over $8.4 million to get (or block) .xxx domain names. ICM Registry gets about $162 ... read more ...
Fri 21st October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Friday Contest: TRAFFIC Picture Quiz - Identify these four pictures to win. It’s Friday so let’s have some fun. The first person to identify all of the items below will win a free copy of David Kesmodel’s The Domain Game Book. Put your answers in the comments. You must get all four correct to win. Picture 1 Who are these two old school domainers? Both got in the game early and battled each other in the drops. Picture 2 Now we’re going to make it harder. Who are the two people pictured here, trying ... read more ...
 
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Mitt Romney Buys CareerPolitician.com from Oversee.net - Oversee.net was previous owner of CareerPolitician.com. Mitt Romney’s campaign launched CareerPolitician.com this week to blast rival Rick Perry. The seller? Oversee.net. The domain name was originally registered at GoDaddy in 2007 by Tucson, Arizona company eFind. It landed in the portfolio of Oversee.net subsidiary Portfolio Brains the following year, and it held it until last month. In September it transferred back to GoDaddy under whois privacy. It doesn’t ... read more ...
 
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Lego Loses First UDRP - Lego finally loses a UDRP case. LEGO Juris A/S, makers of the popular legos toy, has filed nearly 300 UDRP cases to date. It hadn’t lost a single one — until now. In a decision dated October 1 (but for some reason just published this week), a single member panel found against Lego in its case for the domain name legoworkshop.com. The domain was just registered this year. When Lego looked at the site it still had the registrar’s coming soon page with parking ... read more ...
Thu 20th October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Warner Bros Registers Reddit Movie Domains - Movie studio registers Reddit related domain names as it works on movie suggested by Reddit commentor. Reddit is certainly a powerful force on the internet. But is Warner Bros working on a movie about it? The company just registered a number of domain names with the term “Reddit” in them, including RedditFilm.com, reddit-the-movie.com, RedditMovie.com, and ReddittheMovie.com. It’s also possible (probable?) that the domains were registered as part of an interesting ... read more ...
 
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Validus Holdings Says Former Contractor Used .Co Domains to Intercept Confidential Emails - Former contractor allegedly intercepted emails using .co domain names. Validus Holdings, a publicly traded (NYSE: VR) reinsurance and insurance company, has filed a lawsuit against the owner of several .co domain names. The company claims that the owner of some of the domains, Musa Kiana, previously was a third party contractor providing accounts services for Validus. In October of 2010 Validus discovered that Kiana had registered .co domain names including Validus’ ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Threatens to Shut Down Cheapies.com - Registrar failing to escrow whois information. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has sent a breach notice (pdf) to Cheapies.com, threatening to de-accredit the domain name registrar. Cheapies, which bills itself as “domain registrations for the cost conscious”, apparently hasn’t been escrowing its whois information. ICANN has communicated with the company about the escrow problem since January of this year, with the registrar finally telling ... read more ...
 
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HostExploit Names Oversee.net #1 Bad Host - Group releases its latest list of “bad” hosts. HostExploit, which previously put the heat on eNom, now says Oversee.net is the “#1 Bad Host”. The group compared data from 11 sources on a number of “bad” things that can be hosted, ranging from phishing servers to infected web sites. The group’s report for Q3 2011 ranks Oversee.net worst overall, up from 9 last quarter. Oversee.net rated worst for badware and infected web sites. The badware issue is interesting; ... read more ...
 
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VeriSign Releases DomainFinder - Tool searches for available domain names. VeriSign has released a new beta tool called DomainFinder to help people find available domain names. On the surface the tool is just a basic domain name generator: enter a keyword and it shows you available domains you might want to register. But it’s integrated into VeriSign’s DomainScore system, so domains that receive NXD traffic are denoted with a special icon. Hovering over it shows you the 7, 30, and 60 day DomainScore. I ... read more ...
 
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Garry Chernoff Scores Again with 2 More Domain Sales - Two strong five figure domain name sales. Garry Chernoff has just completed two domain name sales in his sweet spot — high five figures. First, Chernoff just completed the sale of Ripley.com for $78,000. The buyer is someone in Santiago, Chile. Chernoff sold the domain name through DomainNameSales.com, the domain sales system used by Frank Schilling and many of InternetAdvertising.com’s clients. Second, he sold callisto.com for 50,000 EUR. The domain name was ... read more ...
Wed 19th October 2011
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5 Questions Answered during TRAFFIC - TRAFFIC is over. Here’s how it stacked up. Last Friday I asked five questions that would be answered at this week’s TRAFFIC conference. We now have answers: 1. How will the auction perform? I’m going to give some credit to Rick on this one. The overall sales numbers were low, but there were a couple things I liked. First, Rick allowed people to pay to get their domains into the auction. I’m not sure if this is the right model but I do think there’s room ... read more ...
Tue 18th October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Sedo Adds Dotster to SedoMLS - SedoMLS gets another partner. Sedo has signed up domain name registrar Dotster to participate in its SedoMLS network. The news comes just one day after the company announced a similar deal with Moniker. SedoMLS is the companies distributed sales network that offers added exposure and “instant transfer” capability for domain name sales. Dotster is the 18th largest domain name registrar with just over a million domains under management according to Webhosting.info. Sedo ... read more ...
 
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Defensive Domains Registered for Miami Casino Fight - Brand protection company Mark Monitor registers defensive domains for Las Vegas Sands. Casinos may be on their way to sunny Miami, and Las Vegas Sands corporation is going on the defensive when it comes to domain registrations. Last week Michael Berkens spotted that the company had registered a number of domains related to casinos in Miami. Now the company is going on the defensive, snapping up domains that may have been used by the group’s detractors. Among the ... read more ...
 
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Stuart Lawley Doesn’t See Competition for .XXX - ICM Registry CEO doesn’t expect adult TLDs to be introduced in New TLD round. Will the new top level domains round that opens next year mean competition for the .xxx top level domain name? Stuart Lawley doesn’t think so. Lawley, CEO of .xxx registry ICM Registry, doesn’t think domains like .sex will be approved. Yesterday Lawley told the crowd at the TRAFFIC conference in Fort Lauderdale that he thinks some of the new objection procedures in the new TLD guidebook, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top Level Domains for a Ultra Wealthy? - Do the 1% need their own top level domain name? Just when you thought you’d seen it all… A new offering from CentralNic called dotFamilyName proposes that the ultra rich should get their own top level domain name. .Buffet, anyone? The company pitches: For as little as $500,000, prominent families will have access to the most prestigious and technologically advanced address located at the apex of the internet. Hey, what else would you do with a spare half million ... read more ...
Mon 17th October 2011
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SedoMLS Lands Moniker - Moniker customers can now list domains on Sedo’s distributed listing service. Moniker customers can now list their domain names for sale on the SedoMLS system, the two companies announced this morning. This is a big win for Sedo. Not only is it the biggest U.S. registrar to sign up for SedoMLS to date, but it’s also a key registrar in terms of inventory. Moniker has long been a domainer-centric domain registrar. Moniker is also integrated with Afternic’s premium ... read more ...
 
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Web.com to Cut More Network Solutions Employees - Company plans more pink slips at iconic domain registrar. Web.com plans to fire more Network Solutions employees after it acquires the company than it previously thought. The company, which also owns domain name registrar Register.com, originally thought it would save $30 million through efficiencies. Now it expects to save much more by “cutting senior manager posts, including Network Solutions’ chief executive, and consolidating data centres and applications”. “There ... read more ...