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 7th July 2015
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Andee Hill joins Donuts as relationship to domain name investors - Hill will work with domain name investors. Donuts has hired Andee Hill as Director of Business Development, the company announced today. She will handle relationships with domain name investors and report directly to co-founder and EVP for Business Development Dan Schindler. Hill most recently was founder of EscrowHill, an escrow service for domain names. Prior to that, she worked for Escrow.com. EscrowHill recently closed up shop by selling its escrow application to the law firm Greenberg Lieberman ... read more ...
 
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This association thinks domain name investing violates U.S. law - Company’s response in WorkBetter.com lawsuit suggests that new businesses should be able to get old domain names. Last week I wrote about a cybersquatting lawsuit filed against the owner of WorkBetter.com. A new company has sprung up using the descriptive name Work Better, and it wants the 16-year-old .com domain name. Office Space Solutions asked the court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the domain’s owner, Jason Kneen, from transferring the domain name. Kneen filed a response, ... read more ...
Mon 6th July 2015
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Latest .com Winners & Losers - Here’s how registrars fared with .com in March. ICANN has published the latest Verisign .com monthly report, containing data from March. Let’s start by reviewing which registrars added the most new .com domain name registrations: 1. GoDaddy* 1,001,339 2. eNom** 227,918 3. HiChina 165,567 4. PublicDomainRegistry 127,377 5. Tucows 118,454 When it comes to companies that won the transfer game, here are the top five registrars with retail operations for March. These numbers are the net gains after ... read more ...
 
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Defending your Domain Names with Nat Cohen – DNW Podcast #40 - How to defend your domain names against frivolous cybersquatting complaints. Nat Cohen has one of the best portfolios of 3 letter .com domains and short generic domains. Because many people don’t want to pay a fair price to acquire them, he’s found himself a target of frivolous UDRP and cybersquatting complaints. In this episode, Nat discusses inherent biases in UDRP, lessons he has learned, and what he does to combat frivolous domain name complaints. Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain ... read more ...
 
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Fore! This week's new domain names - 4 domains available at regular prices, .news and .site enter Early Access. Let’s celebrate .Golf with ridiculous stock art.A number of new top level domain names enter Early Access or regular general availability this week. Rightside’s .news enters early access on Wednesday. The company trimmed the premium domains list, making a number of good domain names available at standard registration prices (assuming they make it unregistered through Early Access, which starts this Wednesday). A Name.com ... read more ...
Fri 3rd July 2015
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EDR: Puka.com + 200 other lapsed domain name sales - Joseph Peterson reviews the past week of expired domain name sales in this Expired Domain Report. Some time passed without China topping our list of expired domain auctions; first Insurance1.com and then DataTrack.com took 1st place – both English and U.S.-focused. This week China once again snags the tape at NameJet’s finish line, coming in 1st with PUKA.com ($9.0k). While it isn’t the $62k monster of 3 weeks prior, this sale nevertheless nearly doubles the price of its runner up. You’ll ... read more ...
 
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WorkBetter.com owners fights behind opposite ACPA lawsuit - Jason Kneen fights motion for preliminary injunction and points out plaintiff’s apparent shenanigans. Earlier this week I wrote about how New York company Office Space Solutions, Inc. had filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against Jason Kneen of the UK over the domain name WorkBetter.com. Kneen registered the domain name in 1999, well before Office Space Solutions had any idea of using the name in 2014. Office Space Solutions also asked for a preliminary injunction on the domain name. [Update 7/7/15: ... read more ...
Thu 2nd July 2015
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eNom adds 2-factor authentication - Make your eNom account more secure. Domain name investors who use eNom can now turn on two-factor authentication to secure their accounts. Setting up two-factor authentication is fairly simple. Once you log into your account, look for “Two Step Verfication” (sic) under the Account Overview: Click edit to start the process. eNom uses the Google Authenticator app, which is simple to set up. It’s also easier to use than a text message system since there are no network delays. After setting up ... read more ...
 
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Lens.com fails in cybersquatting censure over Lens.in - Lens.com not seeing so clearly. Online contact lens retailer Lens.com has failed to win a cybersquatting claim (pdf) against the domain name Lens.in. Lens.com filed the dispute under the .IN Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (INDRP). The panelist determined that Lens.com doesn’t have any rights in the term “lens”, just lens.com. That would not give it rights to Lens.in, and this caused the rest of the case to fail. INDRP is very similar to UDRP, except that the third element of use in bad ... read more ...
 
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BearingPoint pays $100k+ for Net.Work domain name - New TLD sells for $100,000 plus premium renewal rates. Consulting firm BearingPoint has paid $100,000 to Minds + Machines for the domain name Net.work, and that’s just for the first year. It will pay an undisclosed premium renewal to continue using it after the first year. Minds + Machines took a different tack with .work, offering registrations for a just a couple bucks at retail. It also offered up to ten free .work domain names per customer at its own registrar, helping to boost overall registrations ... read more ...
Wed 1st July 2015
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Sex.com Lawsuit: association final domain name over copyright and heading claims - Company demands ownership of Sex.com to settle claims of trademark and copyright infringement. Sex.com is one of the most valuable and storied domain names of all time. A battle over its ownership has resulted in multiple lawsuits, a fugitive hunt and millions of dollars in transactions. The domain name most recently sold for $13 million in 2010. Now a lawsuit is demanding transfer (pdf) of the ownership of the domain name based on copyright and trademark claims. Hydentra Hlp Int. Limited, dba MetArt, ... read more ...
 
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Filament.com for $89,000 and 18 other finish user domain name sales - Company buys Filament.com for new product line. Sedo’s top public end user sale for the past week was Filament.com, which was purchased by a company changing its name and introducing a new product line called Filament Network. The company had some other notable end user sales, including an IOT domain name purchased by a company that’s not an Internet of Things company. They paid a premium because IOT is now a popular acronym. One sale that didn’t make the list, because I can’t confirm it’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Khloe Kardashian final her .com domain name - Better late than never, a Kardashian files request for her .com domain name. Khloe Kardashian, reality TV star and sister of Kim Kardashian, has filed a cybersquatting complaint against the owner of KhloeKardashian.com, demanding that the domain name be turned over to her. The case was just filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The domain name was registered in 2007. It’s unclear who owns the domain name because its Whois record is protected by a privacy service. KhloeKardashian.com ... read more ...
 
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CentralNic sells $1 million domain name portfolio - CentralNic sells more domain names from its domain trading business. CentralNic (AIM: CNIC) announced today that it has sold a group of domain names for US $1 million, to be paid over the coming months. The sale comes from CentralNic’s portfolio of over 20,000 domain names. The company started buying and selling domain names in the second half of last year, and reported $2.5 million in sales in December 2014. CentralNic’s biggest value might be in the two letter domain names it owns, such as ... read more ...
Tue 30th June 2015
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8,000 Premium .Club domains accessible by registrars tomorrow - .Club to begin selling premium domain names through domain name registrars. Starting July 1, you’ll be able to buy premium .Club domain names through the registrar channel. Much like premium domain names offered by other registries, customers will see that the .Club domain name is available but will have to pay a higher price. There’s a key difference between .Club’s premium domains and those from other registries: the premium price is a one time fee. The domain names renew at regular prices. About ... read more ...
 
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Slotting fees and retailer rebates in a domain name industry - The domain name registration business has some similarities to rebate policies in the grocery business. You have to pay for eye-level exposure.I read an article in The Economist over the weekend about grocery chains and supplier rebates, and it had a number of parallels to the domain name industry. Grocery stores make profits in two ways other than from the margin on selling food. First, they get slotting fees from food manufacturers that want shelf space, with higher prices for better space. As ... read more ...
Mon 29th June 2015
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Spamming owners of newly purebred domain names - Just one example of spam based on whois records. We all know that people mine whois databases to sell stuff. It’s incredibly cheap and easy to do these days: compare the zone files, get the new registrations, and then run whois lookups. There are even people selling the entire .com whois database for a few hundred bucks. This makes it easy for people to spam new domain name registrants and sell them services they don’t need, like search engine submission. Last week I registered a handful of .com ... read more ...
 
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This week's new TLDs: .Golf, .Gold and .Date - Famous Four Media releases three domain names this week and Donuts sends four to Early Access. Famous Four Media launches three top level domain names in general availability on Wednesday. All of the domain names can be registered for about $25-$30. .Date: This domain name will compete with two from Donuts: .Dating (3,000 registrations) and .Singles (6,000 registrations). .Faith: KeepThe.Faith? Donuts has had success with .Church with over 11,000 registrations. Faith is broader, but .Church has ... read more ...
 
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Domain Investing Success Story with Lonnie Borck – DNW Podcast #39 - The man who sold Scores.com for $1.2 million discusses domain name investing. Domain name investor Lonnie Borck has a lot of great stories, like the time he sold Scores.com for $1.2 million. And the day he thought he was just taking a day trip to NYC but ended up buying e.co for $81,000 in an auction. On this episode of the Domain Name Wire Podcast, Lonnie talks about his success, but also the number of opportunities he’s missed. He has some advice for domainers on how to improve their chances ... read more ...
 
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Cybersquatting lawsuit filed over domain name purebred 16 years before plaintiff's use - Office Space Solutions wants a domain name registered 16 years before it started using the corresponding term in commerce. It’s taking the legal route to get it. New York company Office Space Solutions, Inc. has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit (pdf) against Jason Kneen of Great Britain over the domain name WorkBetter.com. Office Space Solutions filed an intent-to-use trademark application for Work Better with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014. It began using the mark in commerce in February ... read more ...
Fri 26th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Same-sex matrimony domain names are trending - Big news=domain registrations. People are flocking to their favorite domain name registrars today to register domain names related to same-sex marriage after a Supreme Court ruling legalized gay marriage across the U.S. Verisign Domain View shows a spike in registrations around when the ruling was released, and the numbers will surely grow throughout the day. Among the domains registered: TwoMenMarriage.com GenderNeutralMarriages.com GenderNeutralMarriage.com MarriageEqualityDay.com lbgtmarriage.com lbgtMarriageLaw.com LoveisLoveMarriages.com Marriage-Equality.com Here ... read more ...
 
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Name.com runs intelligent .News promotion - Other registries and registrars should take a look at this promotion. Name.com is running a well-designed marketing contest for free .News domain names. Competitors should take note. The domain name registrar is giving away 100 free non-premium .news domain names when the top level domain releases to the public next month. In order to get one of the free domains, people have to go to a webpage and enter their email address. They’ll then be given a place in line, and the top 100 people in line on ... read more ...
 
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A Fallback Hierarchy for Domain Names - Joseph Peterson takes a look at fallbacks if the domain name you want is taken. In a recent article on the expired domain market, I was struck by NameJet’s top sale for the week: Insurance1.com, which had been a developed website since 1996. What’s striking is that this domain showed its age immediately so that verifying the “vintage” was a mere formality. Many of you will share my gut reaction. We’ve been browsing the web such a long time, after all, that we recognize a dated naming convention ... read more ...
 
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Wirecard nailed for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Big payments company abused UDRP policy to try to get valuable domain name for cheap. Publicly traded payments company Wirecard AG has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Boon.com. The company, which has a market capitalization of 4.37 billion euros, filed a UDRP after failing to acquire the domain name Boon.com for a future payments services brand. In its complaint, Wirecard mentioned that it has been around since 1999 and had 2013 turnover of about a ... read more ...
Thu 25th June 2015
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Voting starts in Verisign .Com Contest: See a videos - Winners make their cases in videos. Voting has opened to pick the grand prize winner in Verisign’s Internet Official contest. The fifteen winners so far each received $5,000. The grand prize winner will pick up a cool $30,000. Each of the winners was asked to create a video about why they picked their domain name. I just watched all fifteen, and I have to say there’s a wide gap in quality. But voting won’t just be about which video is better…I suspect social media promotion will win the ... read more ...