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.

Thu 16th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TLD Profile: .Vote - .Vote gains traction with states and presidential hopefuls. This is the first in a series of articles in collaboration with ICANNWiki, the wiki for the domain name industry. Each article, written by Editor and Community Manager Dustin Phillips, will provide an in-depth profile of a top level domain name. The new .vote gTLD is a joint venture between Afilias and two investors based in Utah, creating Monolith Registry. Its mission is to create a segment of the internet that provides reliable political ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ParkingCrew acquires NameDrive - Domain name parking consolidation continues as Team Internet nabs NameDrive. ParkingCrew has acquired the NameDrive domain name parking business from KeyDrive. The acquisition includes the Overdrive service as well. Starting tomorrow, NameDrive customers will access their parking accounts through ParkingCrew. There is a account claim procedure in place; NameDrive customers should have received an announcement about it today. Last year KeyDrive divested SnapNames, which it acquired from Oversee.net ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The descending value of a .info domain name - One example of a domain name losing value. Yesterday Pizza.info sold for €2,900 in an auction on Sedo. That’s about $3,150. Unfortunately for the seller, he paid $6,180 to buy the domain name on Sedo in 2014. But hey, he shouldn’t feel too bad. Pizza.info sold for $20,452 on Sedo in 2008, according to NameBio. The value of Pizza.info has apparently dropped 85% since 2008. In real estate, the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices only consider homes that have sold at least twice. This way they ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
American Automobile Association loses cybersquatting box opposite locksmith - Group went after locksmith in Naples who uses the business name AAA Locksmith. American Automobile Association (AAA) has lost a cybersquatting claim against a Florida locksmith who uses the brand AAA Locksmith. Adam Cooper uses the domain name AAALocksmithNaples.com for his business, and AAA filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization to take his web address. The panel agreed that AAA is commonly used in business names and that American Automobile Association did not show that Cooper ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.News and .Site have large initial day - Two new domain names add solid numbers on first day of general availability. Two highly anticipated new top level domain names launched yesterday, and both had a good debut. .News added about 8,000 registrations on its first “zone day”, bringing the total to 9,000. .News had already racked up about 1,000 domain names through sunrise and early access. Rightside provided these stats: – Biggest Rightside Sunrise to date (500 domains) – Biggest Rightside EAP to date (both volume and revenue – ... read more ...
Wed 15th July 2015
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Judge: "You were perplexing to set him up" in cybersquatting case - Judge rips apart cybersquatting lawsuit. Want to see what it’s like when someone brings a weak cybersquatting case in front of a judge? Domain Name Wire has obtained the transcript from a hearing over a motion for preliminary injunction in the WorkBetter.com case. Office Space Solutions, run by Harsh Mehta, is starting a new business called Work Better. It tried to buy WorkBetter.com from Jason Kneen, who registered the domain name in 1999, last year. Metha then filed a trademark application. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NF.com domain name saved in UDRP - Panel finds against French group but says it isn’t guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR), a French certification company, has lost a UDRP it filed against the owner of NF.com. AFNOR uses the domain name marque-nf.com. The case decision is in Chinese, so I invite any Chinese readers to chime in if I’ve missed anything key here. The domain name owner is in the milk products business, and NF is an acronym for the Chinese word for milk. The panel ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft registers generics as they come off collision list - Tech giant registers domains such as desktop.computer and computer.systems. Microsoft has started registering generic/descriptive new top level domain names as they are released from the collision list. Specifically, Microsoft has registered at least a half dozen domain names in Donuts’ domains that were recently released as part of the registry’s phased release of names: arcade.zone 7/1 download.center 7/1 developer.center 7/1 desktop.computer 7/8 datacenter.systems 7/8 computer.systems 7/13 The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
A Big .News Day - .News, one of the better new top level domain names, launches today. Rightside launches its .News domain name today, and the company is hoping it becomes one of the highlights of its new top level domain name portfolio. .News has already racked up about 1,000 registrations during the trademark sunrise and early access phases of registration. It becomes available for general registration today at 1 PM EDT. Registrars are offering the domains for about $20-$30. “There’s a real appetite for .News,” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
20 End User Domain Name Purchases - A custom tea machine maker, video game company and swimsuit seller buy domain names. Sedo rebounded from the slow holiday week with good sales results, handling $1.5 million in domain name transactions. It made some good four figure sales to end users, including MyHappy.com, Smartel.com and Clone.org. Here’s a look at 20 domain names purchased by end users over the past week: (You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how to sell your domain names like these on Sedo, ... read more ...
Tue 14th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Great domain sites: UDRPSearch.com - A good resource for domain name disputes. There are a handful of sites I visit multiple types a day, in part to get content for Domain Name Wire. One of these is David Lahoti’s UDRPSearch.com. The free (and ad-less) site makes it easy to see updates on UDRP cases across WIPO, National Arbitration Forum, Czech Arbitration Court and ADNDRC. In addition to viewing the latest case filings and results, UDRPSearch has simple but powerful search features. Highlight any text and it will populate the search ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Trending keywords in .com: Gay, Zone, Buzz - Used, Gay, and three keywords matching new TLDS make the list. Verisign has published its monthly “trending keywords” report, highlighting the keywords making the biggest jump from the May to June in .com domain name registrations. “Used” was number one for the month. According to Verisign DomainView, there was a big spike in “used” domains registered or renewed on June 30. Over 1,700 .com domains were registered/renewed. The Verisign trending chart only takes into consideration new ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
eNom wins eNoms.com. Registrant attempted to send a summary by Whois. - An amusing whois record for eNoms.com. Domain name registrar eNom has won a UDRP for eNoms.com. According to the decision, the owner of the domain name tried to sell the domain name to eNom for $1,500. That’s about the cost of filing a UDRP, but eNom probably didn’t want to set a precedent. What I find amusing about this case is that the domain name owner, who did not respond to the complaint, seems to have sent a message through the whois record: Registrant Organization: ENoms.com has been ... read more ...
Mon 13th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Former GoDaddy employees contend they're due overtime - Plaintiffs say they shouldn’t have been categorized as exempt and are owed overtime. Three former* GoDaddy employees have sued the company, saying they should be paid overtime for work in excess of 40 hours per week. Sal Careaga, Joshua Berry and Amanda Collins each worked in the Website Design Department, which designs websites for GoDaddy customers. The plaintiffs claim they worked more than 40 hours in some workweeks, but were not paid time-and-a-half. According to the suit (pdf), GoDaddy classified ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mike Mann – DNW Podcast #41 - BuyDomains founder discusses domain names. My guest today is Mike Mann. Mike Mann founded BuyDomains, built it up to 500,000 domain names, and then sold it to investors. Now he’s at it again with DomainMarket.com. Mike explains how he used technology to find the best domain names and beat competitors in expired domain name auctions. In addition to using “robots” to win auctions, he has also been called the “human robot”. Find out why on this episode. Also: Cybersquatting lawsuit dropped, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Feeling some .Love for .Site? Check out these reward prices - .Site is an appealing generic, but pricing on premiums is a big turn-off. The unique .Love domain name launches on Thursday.Five top level domain names become available for registration this week. The most notable is .Site, a good generic domain name that launches Wednesday. Radix, the same company that owns .website, is behind .site. What does this mean for the value of .website domain names now that an arguably better and shorter domain has come along? Radix certainly thinks .Site is better. Some ... read more ...
Sun 12th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Some New TLDs fire a whole module in a foot - .Ooo registry Infinibeam takes back 9-month-old domain names. New top level domain names aren’t exactly flying off registrar’s shelves. They face decades of head start from .com and county code domains, universal accessibility challenges, and problems getting slotted in registrar search results. That’s bad enough, but some registries are giving the new domains an even bigger black eye. Consider .ooo, the crazy registry that predicted 1 million registrations in the first year and couldn’t ... read more ...
Fri 10th July 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Illness.com during $12.7k and other Expired Domain Name sales - Joseph Peterson recaps the past week in expired domain name sales at NameJet. Not sure why the previous owner of Illness.com permitted his domain to expire – illness perhaps? At any rate, after slipping into a coma, this 19-year-old was heroically resuscitated by the efforts of 151 NameJet bidders. Now, after an injection of $12,742, the kid’s got a new lease on life; but he’s leaving home. Among expired domain auctions, the second highest result last week at NameJet was HuiChen.com. ... read more ...
Thu 9th July 2015
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June's NameJet Sales in Review: What about China? - Joseph Peterson reviews the past month of expired domain name sales. Within the domain market, China has been a big hit; but recently China – meaning the Chinese stock market – took a big hit. Between June 15 and July 3, the Shanghai Composite Index plummeted from 5178 to 3630, losing 30% of its value in 2 weeks. Some investors who purchased domains linked to China are wondering what this means for the value of their assets. Buyers and sellers can speculate to their heart’s content. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Do 3 minute domains have any genuine value? - Is a domain name worth something if it’s just traded amongst investors with limited potential value to an end user? Three letter .com domain names are very popular right now, with prices increasing significantly over the past year. Much of the demand comes from domain traders in China. China itself is experiencing a bubble in tech stocks that rivals (or surpasses) the NASDAQ 15 years ago…perhaps including the ensuing bust. Will the value of three letter .com domains face a similar fate to other ... read more ...
Wed 8th July 2015
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Workbetter.com lawsuit discharged after decider disses case - Judge says it looked like a “set up”. Just one day after appearing in court and having the judge deny a motion for preliminary injunction, Office Space Solutions has dismissed a cybersquatting lawsuit over the domain name WorkBetter.com. The company, which is launching a new business called Work Better, filed the case last month in an effort to get the domain name from Jason Kneen, who registered the domain name in 1999. Today, attorney Roman Popov of The Bostany Law Firm filed to voluntarily ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WordPress wins another turn opposite Chris Pearson - Thesis creator loses cybersquatting case. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has successfully defended a challenge by Thesis developer Chris Pearson over the domain name Thesis.com. Pearson had a high profile spat with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg about five years ago. Pearson had released his Thesis software with a licensing fee; Mullenweg argued it should be released under GPL because it contained lots of code from WordPress. The issue was apparently settled in 2010. Late last year, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Dozen finish user domain name sales - Newell Rubbermaid among end user domain name buyers. The holiday week slowed sales at Sedo, with the company handling 501 transactions for about $1 million last week. I had difficulty finding the usual number of end user sales, but there are some goods ones in here. Newell Rubbermaid got a steal on KnifeSkills.com, a machinery company bought the .com to match its .us, and Orange County’s bus system got OCBus.com. Here’s the list: ProvidentLoans.co.uk £750 – Provident Financial PLC, a UK lender. NIHA.org ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
June's Top 5 stories on Domain Name Wire - Two lawsuits headline last month’s top stories on Domain Name Wire. What happened to lawyers taking extended summer vacations? The top two stories on Domain Name Wire last month were about lawsuits, one involving WordPress and one that could result in a reverse domain name hijacking complaint. Here’s a look back at the past month in the domain name business. 1. WordPress Foundation sues owner of WordPress domain names – WordPress forbids using the WordPress mark in a domain name. It filed a ... read more ...
Tue 7th July 2015
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Verisign gets Domain Name Stockpiling patent - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 9,075,886 (pdf) to Verisign for “Systems and methods for detecting the stockpiling of domain names.” We’ll call it domaindar for short. The patent explains ways that a registry can determine what a domain name registrar is doing with domain names after they expire. Are they deleting them or keeping them for themselves (i.e., stockpiling.)? To discover what registrars are doing with the domains, Verisign proposes checking site information ... read more ...