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.

Wed 6th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts to skip Landrush on initial collection of TLDs - Sunrise to begin November 26. Donuts announced this morning that it plans to start the sunrise for its first seven top level domain names on November 26. The sunrise will close on January 24, 2014. The seven domains are .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles, and .ventures. Interestingly, the company has chosen to skip the landrush phase for these domain names. The landrush period typically allows people interested in premium domains to place their ... read more ...
Tue 5th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain Name Wire stories from October - A look at the top five stories on Domain Name Wire last month. Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is knocking on the door, and the winter holidays are less than two months away. But first, here’s a look at the top five stories on Domain Name Wire from October. 1. Four .xxx domain names sell for $600,000 – ICM Registry continues to sell premium .xxx domain names for big money. 2. NameBright.com: This is what happens when a domain investor creates a domain registrar ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
I was right: Demand Media spinoff to be called RightSide - Rightside is right. Last week I wrote about how signs were pointing to Demand Media calling its domain name spinoff Rightside. Today the company formally announced that the name will indeed by Rightside. Rightside Group, Ltd. will encompass Demand Media’s current domain name services (eNom, Name.com, United TLD, NameJet) as well as its large portfolio of domain names. The publicly traded company will be led by Taryn Naidu, currently Demand Media’s Executive Vice ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLD field flummoxed by conflict results - Applicants ask ICANN to intervene in objection process. A dozen applicants for new top level domain names have sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN urging the group to step in and fix what they believe are flawed new top level domain objection results. The applicants are questioning the rhyme or reason to objection decisions, including a recent bewildering decision in a community objection against a .sport application. While legal rights objections certainly frustrated some ... read more ...
Mon 4th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Johnson & Johnson loses box opposite Johnsons.com (again!) - For the second time in ten years, consumer products company Johnson Johnson has lost a UDRP against the domain name Johnsons.com. I first wrote about this case back in July. As I noted at the time, the whois record changed slightly since the domain was registered in 1997, but it’s quite clear that the same group still owns the domain name. Nevertheless, Johnson Johnson used the fact that the registrant company name on whois changed as a way to argue that the registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Servers.com domain name to sell for $300,000 after no one shows adult to auction - Stalking horse bidder will walk away with valuable domain name Servers.com. Last month I wrote about how the Servers.com domain name was headed for sale in a bankruptcy auction. There was a stalking horse bid of $300,000, and no other parties submitted an interest in the domain name, so the domain name will sell for $300,000 subject to court approval. The buyer listed on the original court document is XBT Holdings Ltd. I can’t find an exact match for that name when ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afilias loses combined fibre difficulty box opposite .mobile - Amazon, Donuts, and Dish DBS prevail in dispute over .mobile. Afilias, the registry that operates the .mobi top level domain name, has lost a consolidated string confusion objection against applicants for .mobile. This is, I believe, the first objection in which more than one applicant agreed to have the case heard on a consolidated basis. .Mobile applicants in the case included Amazon.com, Donuts, and Dish DBS. Panelist M. Scott Donahey determined (pdf) that .mobi ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Here are a tip 25 NameJet sales from October - Vida.com leads NameJet’s list of October sales. NameJet has been kind enough to publicly release some of its monthly sales data. The past couple times I’ve received the lists I’ve tried to do an end user sales list, only to run into a couple problems. First, almost all of the domains are owned by domainers are are under whois privacy. Second, although an end user might now own some of the domains, I discovered that they actually didn’t buy the names through ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What was TruTag Technologies meditative in this UDRP? - Company goes after domain names registered many years before it started using the trademark in question. I just don’t get it. TruTag Technologies, Inc. just wasted money filing a UDRP against the domain names trutag.com, truetag.net, and truetag.org. The company sells microtags for authentication and anti-counterfeiting. It uses the domain name TruTags.com, which it probably chose because TruTag.com had already been registered for several years when it started its ... read more ...
Sat 2nd November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Auctions sells 39,830 domain names in October - GoDaddy Auctions sells nearly 40,000 domain names in October. The monthly GoDaddy Auctions Domain Market Report won’t be as full of surprises going forward now that GoDaddy is publishing its sales along with Afternic’s each week. But there is still unique data in the October report. The headline number: GoDaddy Auctions sold 39,830 domain names last month. Whereas Buy Now and Auction sales usually account for about half each, this time auctions had a noticeable ... read more ...
Fri 1st November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
True Religion jeans association sues over TrueReligion.com domain name - Last month I wrote about how jeans company True Religion lost a domain name arbitration case with the owner of TrueReligion.com. The owner of TrueReligion.com registered the domain name in 1998, many years before the jeans company came into existence. He originally used the domain name to write about Islam. But once the jeans company became very popular, he started using the domain name to profit from the True Religion brand. The jeans company lost its UDRP domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First new tip turn domain name morning begins? - According to the Trademark Clearinghouse, the first sunrise has begun. The sunrise period for شبكة. (shabaka) has begun…sort of. According to the official Trademark Clearinghouse sunrise page, the sunrise period for this domain name began yesterday and runs through December 30. Just two days ago the dotShabaka team wrote about how they submitted the necessary information to ICANN for sunrise but hadn’t heard back. Even if the sunrise has begun, it will be ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.PersianGulf survives village conflict from those who preference Arabian Gulf name - You say Persian. I say Arabian. Let’s call the whole thing off. The Gulf Cooperation Council has lost a community objection it brought against the applicant for the .persiangulf top level domain name. This case (pdf) was one of the more interesting ones to be decided to date. The objectors don’t like the .persiangulf top level domain name because they don’t believe the body of water should be known as the Persian Gulf. Instead, they believe the name should ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameBright offers $4.99 .com domain names in November - James is right again, you need to exit the drop catch business, if you want the trust of domainers. I assume this is not something you are willing to do. As well you need to stop registering TM terms, maybe a better eyeball of your vaccum system before you go and gulp every drop of the day could help you fix that. I think all parties deserve a fair shot, and people should not be swayed by teaser pricing. I would rather register with Godaddy.com, Name.com, Namecheap.com before even ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools retools website - Company launches new homepage more targeted to security and enterprise services. Don’t be alarmed if you visit DomainTools.com this afternoon and see the image to the right. The company, known in the domain name community for its whois and domain searching tools, has updated its home page as well as some other elements throughout the site. Whereas the previous home page focused on whois searches and finding domain names, the new one is all about cybercrime, brand ... read more ...
Thu 31st October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Famous Four issues matter about .Sport decision - Famous Four questions panelists decision in .sport community objection. In case you haven’t heard yet, SportAccord won a community objection against Famous Four Media’s application for the .sport top level domain name. It was a surprising decision, as it’s pretty hard to argue that “sport” is a clearly delineated community. I personally don’t know anyone who has never participated in a sport or watched a sport. It seems like anyone who breathes is a member ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy to run dual Super Bowl commercials, sans passionate innuendo - Company will continue to advertise in Super Bowl but take a different tack. GoDaddy has announced that it will run Super Bowl ads for the tenth year in a row. The company will again have two 30 second ad spots in the 2014 Super Bowl. One of them will, once again, feature race car driver Danica Patrick. But the similarities between 2014 and the company’s previous Super Bowl commercials will end there: the company will skip sexual innuendo in the new commercials. GoDaddy ... read more ...
 
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ING Direct Canada to turn Tangerine? They bought Tangerine.com for $100k. - Odds are that ING Direct Canada will soon by called Tangerine. David and Michael Castello recently sold Tangerine.com for $100,000, as reported on DNJournal this week. The buyer? ING Direct Canada. George Kirikos, a Canadian domain name investor, just tweeted out that he believes ING Direct Canada is about to change its name to Tangerine: Scotiabank announced a deal about a year ago to acquire the company, and time is running out for it to change the bank’s name. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DL.com sells for $210,689, Twitter batch pitch domain doesn’t sell - Two letter domain sells for big bucks, but three letter domain and Tweeter brands fail to sell. A domain name and intellectual property auction held by Hilco Streambank has concluded with a big two letter domain name sale. Bidding for DL.com ended at 210,689, which was above the reserve price for the domain name. 7 bids were placed in the auction. Also selling in the Hilco auction was the domain name FireDog.com and some associated intellectual property. I believe ... read more ...
Wed 30th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domains Exxon and other finish users bought final week - Exxon among companies that bought domain names last week. GoDaddy/Afternic sold about $1.7 million worth of domain names last week. Here are 15 of the sales that were to end users. Suvidhaa.com $28,000 – Suvidhaa Infoserve P. Ltd., a technology company that uses the domain MySuvidhaa.com. SeeItVideo.com $3,000 – a CSC client ElKitab.com $1,999 – communications company Vodafone. It’s possible an employee bought this for his own use, although it’s registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Typical name collision retard list for Donuts’ TLDs underneath 1,000 names (so far) - Registry won’t have to block many names per TLD, but some of them are good ones. Yesterday ICANN issued the “Alternate Path to Delegation” reports for nine of Donuts’ English language top level domain names. If Donuts chooses to take the alternate path option to speed up delegation of these nine domain names, it will have to initially block anywhere from 194 to 5,184 second level domains. It may be able to unblock many of these after receiving a mitigation ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
21 some-more finish user domain name sales - Sedo sells domain names to a window company, a music school chain, and an office furniture maker. Sedo sold $1.3 million worth of domain names last week. Here are 21 that were to end users. YorkshireWindows.co.uk 2,399 GBP – UK window company Yorkshire Windows HomeWizard.co.uk 950 GBP – Home automation company HomeWizard B.V., which uses the domain name HomeWizard.nl AirCar.co.uk 750 GBP – Airlink Limited in the UK FWG.ch 700 EUR – Fredy Wiesner Gastronomie ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google creates it easier to redeem from site hacks - Updates make it easier to pinpoint hacks and recover from them. Google released improvements to its Webmaster console today that will make it easier to recover from a site hack. As someone who has had his site hacked before, I can attest that it is a miserable experience. Not only do many visitors not come to your site due to browser notifications, but your site can also temporarily loses its indexing. Worse, a lot of times you’ll feel helpless as you try to identify ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy sends out the initial large email blast about new TLDs - Registrar invites customers to follow their favorite top level domains. GoDaddy has featured new top level domain names on its website for a while now. But it appears the company just sent out its first big email promotion to inform its customer base about the coming avalanche of top level domain options. The email (pictured) invites customers to follow top level domain names that interest them. GoDaddy will later allow customers to pre-register domain names, and ... read more ...
Tue 29th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN gets a CSSRO - ICANN promotes senior director to replace Chief Security Officer role. I hope John Crain abbreviates his title on business cards.Most companies have CXOs. ICANN is expanding that to CXXXOs. The non-profit announced today that it has promoted John Crain to be the Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer. That’s a new title for the Chief Security Officer role, which is being vacated by Jeff Moss at the end of the year. Crain was previously a senior director ... read more ...