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 January 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
You competence find irony in what Sedo’s owner is doing now - Schumacher went from the business of delivering ads to blocking them. It’s been a few years since Tim Schumacher, co-founder of Sedo, left the company. You might be surprised to learn that, after creating one of the world’s largest domain parking ad companies, he’s now backing software that blocks internet users from seeing ads. Schumacher is an investor in the company behind Ad Block Plus, a browser plugin that blocks users from seeing most ads on a website. ... read more ...
Wed 15th January 2014
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After a successful 1st day, NamesCon gets prepared to flog off 2nd and final day - Second day of NamesCon is about to start. The first full day of NamesCon in Las Vegas yesterday was a big success. Sure, like any brand new conference, there were a couple hitches here and there. But overall the crowd was big, the content was great, and reviews have been positive. If you aren’t at the show, I invite you to follow me on twitter for photos and updates about the show as they happen. I also posted a couple live blogs from yesterday – one for a “meet ... read more ...
Tue 14th January 2014
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What domain names Burberry and 14 other users bought - Fashion company Burberry among companies recently buying domain names. These are end user sales from Sedo that occurred December 30 to January 5. You can view more end user sales lists here. ThisIsBrit.co.uk $1,150 – British fashion company Burberry Limited. It registered the .com in September. StyleLondon.com $900 – Signature X Ltd, which runs TheStyleLondon.com, drops the the. Meilleureassurance.com EUR 14,995 – MeilleurTaux.com Triangl.co.uk EUR 2,000 – ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First full day of NamesCon kicks off shortly - Around 600 attendees for inaugural NamesCon conference. The first full day of the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas kicks off at 9:55 local time this morning. After a short orientation, Jennifer Wolfe will deliver a keynote. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman will follow with brief remarks about the city and doing business in Las Vegas. After that, there will be 3 simultaneous breakout sessions going on throughout the day starting at 11:15. There are 30 content sessions ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LogicBoxes releases Registry Wallet for registrars - Service aims to make it easier for registrars to manage prepaid balances with registries. Logic Boxes has released a new service called Registry Wallet to help domain name registrars maintain adequate balances with domain name registries. If you’re not familiar with registrar-registry relations, you might be surprised to learn that registrars have to pre-pay for registrations. A registrar will pay an advance to the registry, and each registration for the registry’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Details on .uno, .luxury, .xyz, .rest, .ski, and some-more new TLDs - This is a live blog from the “Meet the New TLDs” panel today at NamesCon in Las Vegas. Participants included: Shaul Jolles CEO, DotLatin .uno Aaron Grego CEO, Punto 2012 .rest, .bar, .cafe Rob Rozicki VP Co-Founder, Starting Dot .ski, .bio, others Daniel Negari CEO, .xyz, .college Monica Kirchner CEO, Dotluxury .luxury Kirchner (.luxury) – the internet is for everybody, we want to make an internet for the luxury customer. It will coexist with what’s currently ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NamesCon keynote: Frank Schilling’s comments on new TLDs - Here are my notes from Frank Schilling’s keynote at NamesCon this evening. In a couple spots I changed the order of his comments because he discussed the same issue at two or more spots in his talk (mostly in response to QA). The introduction of new TLDs is an evolution. It’s going to take many, many years. There are 7 billion people on earth, so for the most part nobody has domain names. This is because domains are very hard to use. That’s why people use Facebook ... read more ...
Mon 13th January 2014
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Donuts assigns rights to .futbol and .reviews tip turn domains to Demand Media’s Rightside - Rightside has two more top level domain names in its new TLD portfolio. Demand Media filed documents with the SEC today related to its spinoff of Rightside, and also published an investor presentation. The disclosures show that Donuts has assigned rights for two new top level domain names, .fubol and .reviews, to Rightside’s United TLD. These domains were applied for under Donuts’ subsidiaries Atomic Falls, LLC and Extra Cover, LLC, respectively. The two domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Why releasing news during a discussion week can be a bad idea - Believe it or not, making big announcements during an industry conference may not be good timing. I, like Michael Berkens, expect some domain industry news to be announced this week to coincide with the NamesCon conference. That said, announcing news while a conference is taking place is not always a good idea. I was speaking to a PR agency a couple years ago about a project, and the idea was to make a big announcement during a relevant conference. The PR people said ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media’s Rightside reveals numbers and gamble on new TLDs in SEC filing - Rightside’s growth is highly dependent on the success of new top level domain names. Demand Media is spinning off its domain name business as a new publicly traded company, Rightside. Today the company filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that give the public much more detail on the business. Having reviewed the documents for much of this morning, one thing became very clear: a bet on Rightside is a bet on new top level domain names. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RPG Life Sciences Ltd guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Company filed dispute against domain name clearly being used for another legitimate purpose. Pharmaceuticals and biotech business RPG Life Sciences Ltd. of Mumbai has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a domain name dispute. World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Nicholas Weston found that RPG Life Sciences had filed a UDRP in bad faith in an attempt to get the domain name RPGlife.com. The domain name is owned by a Wisconsin man who ... read more ...
Fri 10th January 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLDs come out with a whimper - Those hoping for a “big bang” of new TLDs are surely disappointed in how the rollout is taking place. I’ve talked to a number of new top level domain name applicants who believe new TLDs need to come out with a “big bang.” A bunch of great domain options backed by big marketing budgets need to come out early on to make a big splash and give the program momentum. It’s becoming more and more apparent that this isn’t going to happen. Instead of coming out ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panelist awards .charity to Famous Four formed on PIC - Panelist approves of Famous Four application for .charity while killing Donuts’ rival application. A Public Interest Commitment for the .charity top level domain has resulted in Famous Four “winning” the contention set for the domain. The Independent Objector (IO) filed community objections against both Famous Four’s and Donuts’ applications for .charity, along with Famous Four’s application for a Chinese equivalent. The cases were consolidated, and the ... read more ...
Thu 9th January 2014
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39 finish user domain name buyers including Lowe’s and Experian - Home improvement company and credit data provider are among big names who bought domains through Sedo over the holidays. Sedo didn’t publish sales reports over the holiday, so this week we have a doozy. This report includes sales from December 16-29. I’ll publish the most recent report later. You can view previous end user sales reports here. Greenbot.com $14,500 – International Data Group (IDG), the media company behind CIO Magazine, ComputerWorld, etc. Adata.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another day, another domain name escrow use launches: EscrowHill.com - EscrowHill launches ahead of NamesCon conference. Earlier this week I wrote about Agreed, a new domain name escrow service. Fast forward a couple days, and another domain name escrow service is officially opening its doors. But there’s a small caveat. Andee Hill’s new escrow company, which was announced back in November, is officially open for business at EscrowHill.com. It’s fully operating and accepting transactions, but the caveat is the process is not yet ... read more ...
 
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Direct nav association files obvious focus for behest on domain parking traffic - Santa Monica company wants to patent optimized bidding on zero click domain parking traffic. Adrenalads, a direct navigation company based in Santa Monica, has filed a patent application for analyzing and bidding on zero click traffic. U.S. Patent application number 13/541767 (pdf) for “System and method for acquiring domain visitors on a parking service and redirecting to optimal advertisers” was filed in July 2012 and published today. The patent focuses on ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Women in Domaining comes to NamesCon - Event for women in the domain name business will be held Monday afternoon. Women in Domaining, one of the mainstays of the annual Domainfest/Webfest conference in Santa Monica, will be making an appearance at next week’s NamesCon conference. Although I have (of course) never attended the event, I think this is great for an industry dominated by men. I highly encourage any women going to the conference to stop in at this event. The event will take place Monday, January ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Uh oh: .Basketball village conflict fails, .sport prevailed. - Panelist in .basketball decision uses different interpretation of guidelines to come up with a different conclusion than panelist in .sport. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has determined that community objections filed against two applications for .basketball have failed. Comparing this decision to a recent one upholding a community objection to .sport, it appears we may have another case of inconsistent rulings. The .basketball community objection ... read more ...
Wed 8th January 2014
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UDRP Panel orders HP.nu to be eliminated to Hewlett-Packard - HP gets two letter ccTLD in WIPO decision. Hewlett-Packard has won the transfer of the domain name HP.nu in a UDRP decision at World Intellectual Property Organization. .Nu is the ccTLD for the island state of Niue. The operators of .nu use the standard UDRP for handling domain name disputes. The domain name owner tried to put up a defense that he registered a bunch of short .nu domain names and was not targeting HP with his registration. Nunames offered a promotion ... read more ...
 
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Brazilian association guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Dental company went after domain name used by Korean dentist. A three person WIPO panel has found JJGC Industria E Comercio de Materiais Dentarios S.A. of Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The company, which specializes in dental implants, filed its case over the domain name NeoDent.com. It uses the domain name NeoDent.com.br. NeoDent.com is owned by someone in Korea who actually uses the domain name for a dental practice called ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gold is not a clearly defined community, row rules - Rival applicants fails to eliminate Donuts’ .gold top level domain application. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has ruled that “gold” is not a clearly delineated community, and has thus rejected a community objection filed by World Gold Council against Donuts’ application to run .gold. World Gold Council (WGC) is a rival applicant for .gold. It did not apply under community status. In one of the shortest community objection decisions to date, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names De Beers and 20 other finish users bought final week - De Beers was among the famous brands that bought domain names last week. GoDaddy and Afternic sold $1.36 million worth of aftermarket domain names during the New Years week of 12/30/13-1/5/14. Below are some of the domain names that were purchased by end users, including diamond company De Beers. You can see view end user domain name sales reports here. DragonCoin.com $1,199 – OC Gold, and Orange County gold and silver dealer 360eye.com $12,500 – Enerfund, a private ... read more ...
Tue 7th January 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2013 Top Stories: A record series of RDNH filings - More complainants than ever were found guilty of trying to steal domain names using UDRP. 2013 saw a record number of UDRP complainants found guilty of “Reverse Domain Name Hijacking,” which is essentially using the UDRP in bad faith to attempt to obtain a domain name. As of the middle of last month, 24 complainants had been found guilty of abusing the UDRP. Nat Cohen has a lengthy article explaining why the number may have spiked in 2013. One hypothesis is that, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy’s Afternic gets another vast Chinese domain name registrar on board - Afternic adds another registrar in its fastest growing market, China. Domain name sales platform Afternic announced today that Xinnet has joined its fast transfer distribution network for selling domain names. Xinnet is China’s second largest domain name registrar behind HiChina. HiChina joined Afternic’s network in 2012. Based on sales data I monitor, I believe HiChina quickly became one of Afternic’s larger distribution partners. China is Afternic’s fastest ... read more ...
 
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How to collect that NamesCon sessions to attend - A handy guide to choosing conference sessions and some of my picks. The agenda for next week’s NamesCon conference in Las Vegas appears to be basically finalized. For the first time in many years, I’m actually excited about attending some of the sessions rather than just networking with people in the hallways. Selecting sessions is challenging, especially since there will be three simultaneous breakout sessions. Here’s how I went about selecting which sessions ... read more ...