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.

Fri 11th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
True Religion loses domain dispute, though we need to review a dissent - Donahey should certainly know better, but continues to ignore the history of the UDRP, which was intended for a narrow class of clear-cut cases using an expedited and relatively informal procedure, as opposed to the rigorous requirements of real courts. The reason why the UDRP was intended for that narrow class of cases was that the relief sought from the UDRP is extraordinary, namely the transfer of the domain name itself. Donahey is blind to the actual historical documents, which ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google acquires CRR.com domain name from Telepathy for new TLDs - Google buys CRR.com domain from Telepathy. It would seem that good .com domains are still highly prized, even by new top level domain name applicants. Google has acquired the domain name CRR.com, and I have no doubt it was acquired for the company’s new TLD subsidiary Charleston Road Registry. [Update: the domain now forwards to Google’s registry page.] Google currently uses the long domain name CharlestonRoadRegistry.com to promote its new TLDs. I’m somewhat ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oh brother, .Shop applicant has unequivocally mislaid it this time - Commercial Connect thinks applicant guidebook states only one TLD should be allocated for the entire “ecommerce namespace”. Commercial Connect LLC wants the .shop top level domain…badly. It also doesn’t want anyone else to be able to offer a top level domain that could in any way take away .shop’s marketshare. That’s why it filed string confusion objections against applications like .buy, .ecom, .services, and .sale. It is (rightfully) losing most of ... read more ...
Thu 10th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google and Amazon.com backpedal on sealed tip turn domain names - Google to make one more domain open, Amazon relents on 25. Google and Amazon.com have changed their minds about operating some of their applied-for generic top level domain names as “closed” domain names. For many domains, the companies had planned to not offer second level domain name registrations, such as myname.blog, to the public. Instead, they planned to only register such domains within the company. Amazon wanted to keep all of its domain names restricted ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Signed new TLD registry contracts have a far-reaching operation of priority numbers - Priority numbers helped companies at the beginning of the process but do not correlate closely with signed registry contracts. Yesterday ICANN executed its contract with dotCareer, LLC for the .career top level domain names. The application had a priority draw number of 119. A full week before, on October 2, Donuts executed its contract with ICANN for the .careers top level domain. That application has a priority number of 501. So the contract for priority #501 was ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Are we going to TRAFFIC? - The next TRAFFIC domain conference takes place in Fort Lauderdale starting October 20. This year’s fall TRAFFIC conference is just ten days away. The conference returns to The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Fort Lauderdale October 20-23. As usual, there will be an auction, panels, and parties. I typically don’t get excited about the panels at domain conferences, but there’s one on October 21 that should be fun. The gTLD Mania panel pits show organizer Rick Schwartz, ... read more ...
Wed 9th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Inaugural DomainNameSales.com finish user sales list - NBC Universal and Harry David among companies that bought domain names via DomainNameSales.com last month. DomainNameSales.com sent out a monthly sales list for September yesterday. This marks the first time DNW is putting together an end user sales list for DomainNameSales.com. Some of the bigger sales, including DataCenters.com at $190,000, have unknown buyers. NBC Universal bought DumbandDumber.com for $15,000. Bloomsbury Publishing plc, the book publisher that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN gives new TLD field a faster trail to market - Top level domain applicants could start registering domains sooner, but there’s a catch. ICANN has changed its plan for mitigating the risk of so-called “name collisions” at the second level of new top level domain names, potentially allowing new top level domain applicants to start selling domains sooner than expected. It’s good news for applicants whose strings fell in the “uncalculated risk” bucket of name collisions. It could also be good news for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Top turn domain deliberate in Tes.co domain name dispute - TES.CO is confusingly similar to TESCO, and soon the top level domain will play a bigger role in domain disputes. In July I wrote about grocery chain TESCO filing a dispute against the domain name tes.co. A decision has now been rendered. UDRP panels typically disregard the top level domain name when it comes to determining if a domain name is confusingly similar to a trademark. If .co was ignored in this case, then TESCO would fail as they’d have to argue that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Got Milk? or Milk Life: Sedo finish user domain sales - End user domain name sales at Sedo last week. This week’s end user domain sales at Sedo include a purchase by ad firm Deutsch. Deutsch, which counts California Milk Processor Board (Got Milk?) as a client, bought MilkLife.com for $7,000. Deutsch is also GoDaddy’s ad firm. Here are other end user domain sales at Sedo from the past week: Cloud storage and document sharing company Box bought BoxNotes.com for 8,000 EUR. That’s a lot less than it paid for the Box.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Uh-oh: ICANN will be forced to act after opposing .cars decisions - A conflicting opinion over .cars leads to an interesting contention set problem. A panelist for a string confusion objection brought by Google against DERcars, LLC over the top level domain name .cars has ruled in favor of Google. By ruling in favor of Google, that means DERcars’ application for .cars will be put into a contention set with Google’s application for .car. This creates a big problem. You see, DERcars’ application isn’t the only one for .cars. ... read more ...
Tue 8th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web growth association squares off with genuine estate organisation over “Ascent” name - Two California companies will head to court of business name. Electronic Creations Company (ECC), a web development company, has filed a lawsuit (pdf) seeking declaratory relief to fend of an attack from a California real estate firm. ECC owns a number of good domain names, including VH.com, Pup.com, We.org, and DuckPond.com. It also owns AscentRealEstate.com. That caught the attention of Ascent Real Estate, a San Diego real estate firm using AscentRealEstate.net, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
NBA, MLB, NHL and colleges group adult to take down websites offered counterfeits - Sports leagues team up to take down counterfeiters. A number of professional sports leagues and colleges have filed a lawsuit in an effort to seize domain names and shut down websites used to sell counterfeit goods. The suit (pdf) was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Illinois. The plaintiffs include the NBA, NHL, MLB, Collegiate Licensing Company, the University of Alabama, and the University of Oklahoma. The complaint explains that the unknown defendants, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
56 new TLD contracts signed, Donuts has some-more than half - New top level domain contracts are slowly (but surely) being executed. ICANN’s latest new top level domain name contracting stats show that 56 registry agreements have been signed. 55 of those have been published to ICANN’s registry page. Here’s a look at some of the stats so far: 32: The number of contracts signed by Donuts, which had more applications than any other company. 13: The number of contracts for internationalized domain names, despite all IDNs being ... read more ...
Mon 7th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
YellowPages.com sues YPOnline.com owners for heading infringement - Owner of YP.com claims site infringes its trademark and the YPOnline.com constitutes cybersquatting. Online directory service YellowPages.com, which also owns YP.com, has sued YPOnline.com for alleged trademark infringement and cybersquatting. In the suit filed in U.S. District Court (pdf), YellowPages.com says that the YPOnline.com site mimics the look of YellowPages.com: For example, Defendant’s website mimics Plaintiff’s website’s placement of “YP” in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainNameSales.com gets placement (and here’s how to opt-in) - If you opt-in, GoDaddy and DomainTools customers will now see that your domain is for sale. DomainNameSales.com’s domain sales platform has been quickly adopted by a number of domain name investors. But until now it has been missing a key ingredient of domain sales – distributed listings. That changed today as the company announced a deal with GoDaddy and DomainTools to help generate more sales leads for domain names. If a GoDaddy user searches for your exact ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sorry ThePrive.com, we can’t only take Prive.com - Company fails to grab domain name through UDRP. The operators of the sample sale website Privé, online at ThePrive.com, have lost a UDRP against the domain name Prive.com. This is despite the respondent not filing a formal response. There are a number of reasons the complaint failed, including that Privé is a generic term. But the panelist explained in great detail how badly the complainant’s lawyers screwed up, too. Prive.com was registered back in 1996, well ... read more ...
Fri 4th October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
31 some-more finish user domain name sales - Several food companies among end user buyers at Afternic last week. Afternic had a strong sales week last week, tallying nearly $1.3 million in sales. Here are 31 of the sales that were to end users. Edlong Flavors, which creates concentrated dairy flavors, bought DairyFlavors.com for $1,977. MD Direct, manufacture of protective masking films and papers, bought ProtectiveFilms.com for $3,000. New Jersey company CommandCare LLC bought CommandCare.com for $1,895. Snackfoods ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Neustar faces the Verisign moment - Contract to run “telephone number registry” is out for bid. You may know Neustar as the registry for the .biz domain name, and the registry selected by many applicants for new top level domain names. But that’s not its bread and butter. Its business was built off of a single contract to administer the North American Numbering Plan. The simplest way to describe this is a registry for phone numbers. Much like a domain name registry, this system enables the routing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Servers.com domain name to be sole in failure auction - Prized domain name will be sold in a court ordered bankruptcy sale. The domain name Servers.com is headed to the auction block due to bankruptcy. Servers.com is one of the domains in the Ondova Limited Company bankruptcy. A previous portfolio of domains from Ondova sold for over $5 million, although it got hung up in court for a while. The auction will take place October 29 in Dallas. A bankruptcy hearing is scheduled for November 4 to approve the sale. There’s ... read more ...
Thu 3rd October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domains Getty Images, John Hancock, and others bought final week - Getty Images and John Hancock Insurance were among the end user domain buyers at Sedo last week. Sedo sold $1.4 million worth of domain names last week, including these sales to end users. pairNetworks bought yet another domain in the aftermarket. This time it was Pair.es for $2,000. Online backup service KeepItSafe, a j2 Global company, bought KeepItSafe.de for 800 EUR. It uses the .com version. A guy with the last name Siegmund bought Siegmund.com for $15,000. Swedish ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bill Doshier is formulating Buzz around .Buzz - After signing ICANN contract, .buzz is readying its rollout plans. Yesterday I sat down with Bill Doshier, applicant for the .buzz top level domain, while he was in Austin. Doshier was all smiles as he had just finished signing his registry contract with ICANN. Signing the contract is a big milestone for all new top level domain name applicants. It’s been a lot harder to get to this point than most expected. “I say ignorance is bliss,” said Doshier, in response ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
I’ll wear your company’s t-shirt to TRAFFIC if you… - Make a donation and get publicity. The next TRAFFIC conference is just a few weeks away. TRAFFIC is a good opportunity for domain name companies to get exposure for their brand and services, and I want to give you a leg up this time: I’ll wear your brand’s t-shirt on one of the conference days. I’ll be like a walking billboard. I will make sure to photobomb as many of Ron Jackson’s pictures as possible while wearing your shirt so it gets more attention. I’ll ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain Name Wire stories from September - From a big domain sale to an acquisition, here are the top five news stories from last month. September was a busy month in the domain name industry, and it’s just getting ready to heat up. Here’s a look back at the top stories on DNW last month: 1. Sedo completes its second most expensive domain name transaction ever – we still don’t know what the domain is and what price exactly it sold for. As Sedo gets rolled into United Internet, it will be more difficult ... read more ...
Wed 2nd October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names BMW and 19 others bought - BMW was among the end user buyers at Sedo recently. Some times when you schedule a post on WordPress it somehow doesn’t publish, giving an error “misses schedule”. That happened to one of my end user sales posts scheduled for September 20. I just realized it. So here’s a belated look at some of Sedo’s end user sales from September. Nutritional supplements company nu3 GmbH, which already owns nu3.com and nu3.de, bought nu3.co.uk for 1,400 GBP. Swiss architecture ... read more ...