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 28th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verisign gets obvious for presaging domain name renovation rates - A crystal ball for estimating domain name renewal rates. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has granted patent number 9,094,467 to Verisign for “Method and system for predicting domain name registration renewal probability”. Simply: take a number of factors about the domain name and its history to calculate the chances of it being renewed. Verisign has to run these calculations frequently, and not just for its own forecasting. Because of the renewal grace period, it can’t give final renewal ... read more ...
 
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Afternic domain offered Hangout is today - Learn how to sell your domain names with Afternic in a Hangout today. GoDaddy is hosting a Hangout today to explain how Afternic works with GoDaddy. The hangout takes places at 11 am PDT (2 PM EDT). GoDaddy will discuss how Afternic works and integrates with GoDaddy. Representatives will also explain domain listing best practices. If you are willing to sell domain names with fixed prices, Afternic is one of the best ways to get exposure for your domain names. If someone searches for your domain name ... read more ...
Mon 27th July 2015
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Unbiased.com saved in UDRP though no RDNH - UDRP panel is unbiased, finds in favor of domain name owner. The owner of Unbiased.co.uk has failed to win rights to the Unbiased.com domain name in a UDRP. Unbiased.co.uk helps people find financial advisers, mortgage brokers, solicitors and accountants. The company filed its cybersquatting claim on the basis of a trademark for unbiased.co.uk. While panelists Neil Brown, Henrik af Ursin and Paul M. DeCicco found against Unbiased.co.uk in the case, they declined to find the company to have engaged ... read more ...
 
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A Crazy Cybersquatting Lawsuit with Jason Kneen – DNW Podcast #43 - The inside story of a baseless cybersquatting lawsuit. Imagine that you’re an app developer who has registered a handful of domain names over the years. One day your twitter feed and phone lights up with people discussing how you’re being sued over one of the domain names you own. That’s exactly what happened to Jason Kneen. A new business starting up in 2014 filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against the domain name WorkBetter.com, which he registered way back in 1999. Jason is on the show today ... read more ...
 
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Vox Populi wants heading for .Sucks - Controversial new top level domain name registry wants to trademark “.sucks”. Vox Populi, the domain name registry for .Sucks, has applied for the trademark “.Sucks” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. The goods and services for the mark are “Domain name registration services; registration of domain names for identification of users on a global computer network.” The USPTO does not grant trademarks for top level domain names, so I’m not sure what Vox Populi hopes to accomplish ... read more ...
Fri 24th July 2015
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3 "New" Risks to Verisign's Business - Company includes additional risks in its most recent quarterly filing. .Com registry Verisign released its earnings and filed its quarterly report with the SEC yesterday. Using Intelligize, I compared Q2’s SEC report to Q1 to look for changes. I found three interesting risk factors added to the most recent report. Some of these aren’t new risk factors, but they weren’t disclosed in the Q1 report. 1. China – newly enforced regulations for business licenses for selling domains in China For ... read more ...
 
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Are IDN .com owners about to get screwed? - Verisign finds way to sign ICANN contract, but it might come at the expense of IDN investors. [Update: see comment from Verisign at end.] It’s been a long, long wait for owners of internationalized domain names under .com. The idea was that they’d get rights to IDN.IDN-as-transliteration domain names to match their IDN.com names when they came out. So they registered IDN.com domain names and held on to them for a decade, waiting for their investment to pay off. Given that the IDN-as-transliteration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Verisign to travel .Net prices 10% - Domain registration bills increasing. Verisign announced that it is raising its wholesale price for .net domain names in February. The current fee is $6.79, and this will jump 10% to $7.46 effective Feb. 1, 2016. Verisign is able to increase the price of .net domain names annually. A 2012 contract extension for .com domains keeps that price fixed at $7.85 for the duration of the contract. That means the wholesale price for .com is now less than long time competitors such as .biz and .org, which also ... read more ...
Thu 23rd July 2015
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Patent goblin relates for domain name government patent - Intellectual Ventures wants patent related to managing domain names and web hosting. Some big companies in the domain name space have lots of patents. Despite threats, no major players have tried to extract money out of their competitors. But registrars should be concerned about a recent patent application because of the company behind it: Intellectual Ventures. Through its company III Holdings 1, LLC, the company has applied for a patent for “System and Method for Domain Management and Migration”. The ... read more ...
 
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"Spa Community" gets .Spa domain name - Group wins Community Priority Evaluation for .Spa. Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council Limited has won (for now) the sole right to operate the .Spa top level domain name after winning a Community Priority Evaluation for the name. The group scored 14 points (pdf) out of 16 to prevail. It lost one point for “Content and Use” and one for “Community Endorsement” under support. According to its application, Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council Limited “is the regional coordinating body ... read more ...
 
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Domain name registrar's cessation stayed after it files for arbitration - OpenTLD argues it should have received a formal breach notice first. Domain name registrar OpenTLD, which had its ability to register new TLDs suspended by ICANN, is back in action for now. ICANN suspended the registrar for cybersquatting on other registrar’s brands. OpenTLD has filed for arbitration in the matter, and ICANN has agreed to stay the suspension. The company’s complaint against ICANN is that it didn’t first serve it with a formal breach notice allowing it time to remedy before ... read more ...
 
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Google registers domain names for Google Play's lapse to China - Domain name registrations suggest Google is indeed going back to China with Google Play. It appears that Google Play, the search giant’s app store, is indeed making another play for the Chinese market. There have been rumors about a return to China in recent months. Google registered a number of domain names related to Google Play in China yesterday and today, including: googleplaychina.com, googleplaychinaedition.com, googlechinaaccount.com, googlechinaedition.com, gcaapis.com, gcaauth.com, gpceauth.com, ... read more ...
 
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This Week's Expired Domain Name Report - Joseph Peterson reviews the past week of expired domain names sales, including a look at what’s happening in China after the stock bubble burst. After the Chinese stock market began its downward spiral on June 15, domain investors and brokers began speculating about how the Chinese domain market would respond. For my part, I examined June sales above $2k at NameJet, looking for any short-term recoil among domain buyers. Now that July has given us 3 weeks of additional data, we can assess the ... read more ...
Wed 22nd July 2015
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John Berryhill gets stolen EHT.com domain returned by UDRP - Panel orders domain name stolen in 2013 to be returned to previous owner. Domain name attorney John Berryhill has successfully won the transfer of the domain name EHT.com for his client, in a rare case in which he acted on behalf of the complainant. John Dilks has owned EHT.com since 1997. The domain name was apparently stolen from Dilks in late 2013, but he didn’t know this until just recently. That’s because the thief kept the nameservers posted to Dilks’ hosting while he transferred the ... read more ...
 
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$50,000 chastisement for filing a whimsical UDRP! - Company pays big bucks after filing losing UDRP. A Belgium maker of ultrasound equipment has paid $50,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from a frivolous UDRP it filed. SDT International filed a UDRP for the domain named SDT.com last year. The domain name is owned by Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, and SDT had tried to purchase the domain name before filing the complaint. (Cohen was on the Domain Name Wire Podcast recently, discussing similar frivolous cases). Upon receipt of the UDRP, Cohen reached out to ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy contrast "Ad" nomination in hunt results - Search results that are bumped up through marketing agreements get a new label. GoDaddy is testing the use of an “ad” designation in its domain name search results. Search results that have their locations influenced by a registry paying to bump up the result are sometimes labeled with the designation. The label is similar to the “premium” label placed next to aftermarket domains listed by sellers. Here’s an example: GoDaddy has been testing the label for several months. With hundreds of ... read more ...
 
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16 End User Domain Name Sales - A look at 16 domain names sold on Sedo last week that were purchased by end users. Sedo handled about a million dollars worth of domain name transactions last week with 499 domains. Many of the biggest sales — such as Frank Schilling’s $66,000 sale of newy.com — are still in the transfer process. At that price, it’s surely an end user purchase. Still, there are some notable sales to report. A three letter .org domain sold for $7,500 and a dermatology company bought a domain matching one of ... read more ...
Tue 21st July 2015
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Scripps files heading applications for new tip turn domains - Trademarking Living and Lifestyle. Scripps Networks Interactive, through its top level domain name company Lifestyle Domain Holdings, has filed for U.S. trademarks matching a number of the top level domain names it will run. The company filed multiple trademark applications for “Living”, “Lifestyle” and “Vana”, which all match new top level domain names. There are four intent-to-use trademarks for each word, the only difference being the goods and services descriptions. One description ... read more ...
 
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How & because we should use DomainTools' portfolio tracker - DomainTools offers a nifty tool for tracking domain names. DomainTools has a lot of useful features, but most people just barely scratch the surface of its capabilities. One of the tools I find particularly useful is Domain Monitor. Simply put, Domain Monitor monitors domain names and lets you know if changes are made to the whois record. Changes can include expiration dates, lock status, registrar, registrant, etc. It’s pretty obvious how this can help you with your own portfolio. DomainTools ... read more ...
 
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Google reiterates how new TLDs are rubbed in hunt results - Google issues details on how new top level domain names affect search engine results. (In short, they don’t.) Google has posted to its Webmaster Central Blog about how it handles new top level domain names in search. Because of the importance of this issue to the industry, I have republished the questions answered in the post along with my commentary. Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search? A: Overall, ... read more ...
 
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E-Renter.com nailed for retreat domain name hijacking - Background check company filed complaint in abuse of cybersquatting policy. A background check on this company won’t come back clean anymore.E-Renter USA Ltd, which operates a background screening site for renters at E-Renter.com, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name ERenter.com. The company filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization against Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis. The owner of the background check company registered the domain ... read more ...
Mon 20th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
My thoughts on .Co branch 5 - Driven by good marketing, .Co celebrates success on fifth anniversary. Five years ago today, on July 20, 2010, the .Co domain name entered general availability. I remember sitting at a table at the Austin Convention Center during HostingCon, trying to track general reaction to how the domain name launch was going. It certainly looked positive, especially since Overstock had just paid $350,000 for O.co. Five years later, it’s safe to say .Co is a success. Hands down. The business sold for over $100 ... read more ...
 
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5 Tips to Sell More Domains, with Shane Cultra – DNW Podcast #42 - Sell more domain names with these great tips. Want to sell more domain names? Shane Cultra of DomainShane.com gives 5 tips to sell more domains on today’s episode. Learn how to buy the right domains, figure out which of your domain names are in high demand, get more attention for your Flippa listing and more. Also: A legal smackdown, ParkingCrew acquires NameDrive, the falling value of a domain name, .news and .site, and Microsoft registers new domains. Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain ... read more ...
 
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Sedo creates improvements to Direct Auctions - Auctions will now trigger alerts to people who previously placed offers on the domain. Sedo has made a couple improvements to to its Direct Auction service, a recent option that lets customers start an auction for their domain name whenever they’d like for a $59 fee. One of the changes should be appealing to anyone who has received lots of previous offers on a domain name. If the domain name is placed in auction with the Direct Auction service, all people who have previously placed an offer on ... read more ...
Fri 17th July 2015
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Results from 100+ lapsed domain name auctions - Joseph Peterson reviews the past week in expired domain name sales. Dilíu is Romanian for “madman”, which is what you’d have to be to believe DiLiu.com sold for $4.9k for any reason other than China. In Chinese, dì liù means “sixth”; dī liú is a “trickle”; and dī liū would be to “carry”. While the domain remains under whois privacy, we can only be 99.9% sure of this rationale; but China is never absent from these charts, and expired Pinyin domains have recently sold ... read more ...