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 23rd January 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names Capital One and 28 other finish users bought final week - Capital One was among the end user buyers making domain name purchases last week. GoDaddy and Afternic combined to sell $1.9 million worth of domain names last week, which is higher than normal. Below are sales that appear to be to end users. You can see previous end user sales reports here. KirklandPermits.net $2,077 – City of Kirkland, Washington. They also have the matching .com. Crafting.com $51,500 – Missouri Start Quilt Co, seller of craft supplies. This ... read more ...
 
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Cobb International guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Company filed UDRP case even though the domain names at issue were not registered in bad faith. South African firm Cobb International has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP decision at World Intellectual Property Organization. Cobb International filed a UDRP for the domain names CobbQ.com and CobbAmerica.com against Chris Holloway, Cobb Depot, Inc., Advanced Outdoor Concepts, Inc in Florida. The respondent in the case was a distributor for ... read more ...
 
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Porn won’t be authorised on a home page of .Sexy websites - Nudity is too sexy for .sexy home pages. Anyone who wants to register a .sexy domain name to build their porn empire, take note: you can’t have nudity on the “home page” of your domain name. .Sexy registry Uniregistry spells out the rules in a revised document (pdf) it filed with ICANN on January 20. The guidelines only apply to the home page. This means that sites could have a warning button/entry page on the home page that leads to adult material elsewhere ... read more ...
 
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Domain name discussion designed in Hong Kong to coincide with INTA meeting - New TLDs come to Hong Kong. DotAsia and Momentum Events are planning a domain name conference in Hong Kong May 13-14, coinciding with the International Trademark Association (INTA) annual meeting taking place in the same city. The event is a combination of DotAsia’s “Internet of Names” meeting and Momentum’s “Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress” events. Targeted attendees include new TLD applicants, brands, domain investors and other industry stakeholders. ... read more ...
 
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Two .xxx domain names sell for $750,000 - ICM Registry sells two more domain names to previous premium domain customer. Premium .xxx domain names continue to sell for top dollar. .XXX domain registry ICM Registry announced today that Really Useful has acquired Tube.xxx for $500,000 and Tubes.xxx for $250,000. Really Useful is the same company that acquired four .xxx domain names for $600,000 back in October. ICM’s press release quotes Really Useful’s “JT” comparing his success on .xxx sites compared ... read more ...
 
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DomainFest earnings to Hollywood, skeleton discussion for finish of March - Oversee.net’s DomainSponsor announces plans for 2014 conference. DomainSponsor’s annual DomainFest conference is changing its branding back to DomainFest and has set its dates for 2014. The nine year old conference changed its name last year to WebFest Global because the agenda had expanded beyond domain names into search, mobile, and web development. Although it appears this year’s event will also focus on these expanded topics, the company is reverting its ... read more ...
Wed 22nd January 2014
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TKO: There will be no .sports tip turn domain in a initial round - Objection panel rules that the the sport community would face material detriment for a .sports domain name. Well, at least this decision is consistent. Except it isn’t. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has upheld SportAccord’s community objection against Donuts’ application to run the .sports top level domain name. While this decision (pdf) is consistent with another panelist’s decision in .sport, the rationale again conflicts with the decision ... read more ...
 
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Donuts has bad fitness of a draw, loses .ski as well - Panelist from .sports decisions also rules against Donuts for .ski. Earlier today I wrote about how Donuts lost a community objection brought against its .sports top level domain name application. It also lost an objection brought against .ski. This was a case of bad luck-of-the-draw: it got the same panelist on this case, Jonathan Taylor, as it did for .sport. Had Jennifer Kirby, who handled the .basketball case, heard this case then Donuts likely would have won. This ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy posts the initial 2014 Super Bowl Commercial - No naked women. Just men this time. GoDaddy has published one of its Super Bowl Commercials that will air during the big game February 2. As promised, it’s a distinct departure from previous years in which the company featured scantily clad women. This time it is scantily clad men, although Danica Patrick still plays a role. Compared to the previous commercial along these lines featuring Jean-Claude van Damme, I think this commercial says less about what GoDaddy ... read more ...
 
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UDRP row refuses to give lapsed domain to prior owner - Domain owner that offered to sell domain name to respondent let it expire. A UDRP panel has refused to transfer the domain name iSound.com back to a previous owner who let the domain name expire. Jeremy Same filed the case against Richard Weston / dreamGEAR, LLC for the domain name iSound.com. Same’s company owned the domain name, and previously offered to sell it to the respondent, which has a number of trademarks for i.sound and claims to have sold over $50 million ... read more ...
 
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Web.com: WebLock module will be opt-in, not opt-out - Company will not charge customers for added security service unless they accept it. Web.com, parent company of Network Solutions and Register.com, came under fire yesterday after informing some customers they would automatically be opted-in to a security program that costs $1,850. An email sent to 49 customers informed them that their accounts would have added security under a new service called WebLock. The email also indicated that customers would be charged $1,850 ... read more ...
Tue 21st January 2014
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A cost comparison of domain name escrow services - Here’s a comparison of domain name escrow services based on price – but price shouldn’t be the only thing you consider. There are a lot of options when it comes to domain name escrow. Naturally, price is a variable when selecting an escrow service. So I put together a simple chart that compares prices of 7 escrow services at different transaction values. The prices make a few assumptions: 1. You’re in the U.S. and the transaction is in U.S. Dollars. 2. You ... read more ...
 
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What domain names Yahoo! and 21 other finish users bought - Yahoo! buys a sports domain name and other end user domain name purchases. Afternic and GoDaddy sold $1.7 million worth of aftermarket domain names from 1/6/14 – 1/12/14. Here are some of the sales that were to end users. You can see more end user reports here. JiveCloud.com $3,650 and LCloud.com $13,700 – Community software and social media marketing firm Lithium. WarehouseCleaning.com $1,199 – Web design company Ambidextrous Services, which specializes in ... read more ...
 
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Heritage Auctions usurpation submissions for subsequent domain name auction - Auction is scheduled to take place in late March. Heritage Auctions is planning its second domain name auction to take place in late March, and is seeking domain name owners to submit their domains for the auction. The company sold about $1.5 million worth of domain names in its inaugural domain name auction last November, headlined by an after-the-auction sale of MutualFunds.com. Heritage Auctions is only looking for one and two word .com domain names. They should ... read more ...
 
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A Recap: My week during NamesCon - A recap of what I did, saw, and heard during NamesCon last week. Last week was the inaugural NamesCon conference in Las Vegas. In case you weren’t one of the close to 600 people who experienced it in person, everything you’ve heard is spot on: it was a home run. Richard Lau, Jodi Chamberlain, and Jothan Frakes did a fantastic job pulling this conference together in a short period of time. They saw a hole in the domain conference circuit and filled it with zeal. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Big company’s website dangling interjection to 2013 RAA - Sports site suspended because someone didn’t click on a confirmation email. It’s not exactly Amazon.com, but a website belonging to a large company has been suspended thanks to a whois verification snafu. Fixtures365.com, a sports betting site, has been suspended because the owner did not respond to a verification email. As of January 1, domain name registrars operating under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement must suspend sites when they cannot verify ... read more ...
 
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Network Solutions automobile enrolls business into $1,850 “WebLock” service - If your domains are within the top 1% of traffic at Web.com, the company is going to opt you into a new program that costs $1,850 the first year. UPDATE 1/22/14 3PM CT: The company says the program will actually be opt-in, not opt-out. Read more here. Domain name registrar Network Solutions, part of Web.com, is taking some heat today for notifying a customer that it is auto enrolling him into a program that will cost $1,850 per year. Brent Simmons, who says he has ... read more ...
Mon 20th January 2014
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What domains Sprint, Cox, BitTorrent, and Buzzfeed bought - Big companies buy aftermarket domain names. Once again, I’m a bit behind with end user domain names sales reports due to traveling for NamesCon last week. Here are the end user domain sales I found on Sedo’s sales list it sent out last week. You can view previous reports here. JCT.com $98,000 – Investments company Junction Investments, Inc. JCT is an abbreviation for “Junction.” JLL.pt $5,000 – Commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle bought its ... read more ...
 
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Panel: .Kosher tip turn domain focus is Kosher - Application for .kosher top level domain name can proceed after surviving objection. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has ruled that a community objection against .kosher has failed. The case was really an issue of competitive advantage, as the objector is in competition with the domain applicant in the business of certifying that products are kosher. The case was filed by Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which describes itself as the ... read more ...
 
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What WordPress owner Matt Mullenweg pronounced about domain names during NamesCon - WordPress enforces its brand in domain names and doesn’t plan to use any new top level domain names. Matt Mullenweg (right) being interviewed by Braden Pollock (left) at NamesCon.One of the nice surprises at NamesCon last week was a last-minute appearance by Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg created WordPress and is CEO of Automattic, which runs the hosted WordPress.com platform. Unfortunately, since it was last minute, I did not get to hear his entire QA with Braden Pollock. ... read more ...
 
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Pool.com gets agreement for .wien and .tirol auction services - Pool.com scores sunrise and landrush business for two domains, but this aspect of TLD launches isn’t as important as before. Pool.com announced today that it will handle auction resolution for the sunrise and landrush phases for Austrian TLDs .wien and .tirol (its capital city and a province, respectively). I won’t write about every company’s win for this type of service, but this one is newsworthy for a few reasons. First, before the new TLD program came out, ... read more ...
Fri 17th January 2014
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Donuts loses .Insurance though can keep .Insure - New top level domain mega-applicant Donuts is no longer in the running for the .insurance top level domain name as a result of a community objection decision. But it has survived an objection against its .insure application, for which it is not in a contention set. Panelist Mr. Juan Fernández-Armesto ruled in Donuts favor on one of the .insurance objections as well as the .insure one, but against Donuts on another community objection against .insurance. In the cases ... read more ...
 
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.Health field tarry village objections - .Health applications move forward after lengthy objection process. The objection process against .health top level domain names is over. Both DotHealth, LLC and Donuts have survived community objections filed against their applications. They previously survived limited public interest objections. The community objections were filed by the ICANN At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC). Panelist Jan Paulsson took a bit different approach to this determination than other ... read more ...
 
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YogaGlo gets defensive with domains after obvious backlash - Online yoga instruction service snaps up domain names to protect itself during patent backlash. YogaGlo, which provides yoga classes via the web, has faced quite the backlash since it received a patent for its way of recording a yoga class and delivering it over the web. The company penned a response to the backlash last month to try to quell what it called the “misinformation” about what the patent pertains to and how it is enforcing it. It is also getting defensive ... read more ...
Thu 16th January 2014
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Bruce Marler listened to his customers. Then he altered his geodomain business model. - People weren’t very interested in buying local ads anymore. But they were interested in something else. I remember to go-go days of geo domain names. There was an annual geo domain conference where owners of geographic domain names – e.g. city.com or state.com – got together to boast about their success. But the business model for these domain names has always been a bit elusive. It shifted during the recession. The tried-and-true model of directory listings ... read more ...