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 25th September 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Walmart goes after dispute website and man responds with indignant rant - Gripe site creator demands Walmart pay him before he hands over domain name. Walmart has filed a dispute under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to take control of the domain name WalmartDoorGreeter.com. [Update: the domain owner has transferred the domain to WalMart.] The domain name was registered by a Missouri man who set up a gripe site about how much Walmart pays its employees. Gripe sites are OK in certain circumstances. But after receiving ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
JetGo guilty of RDNH after filing “seriously misleading” box opposite Frank Schilling - Australian charter jet company didn’t give the full story to WIPO panel. Frank Schilling’s Name Administration has successfully defended another UDRP filed against one of its domain names. The three person UDRP panel also found the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. JetGo Australia, an airplane charter company, filed the complaint over the domain name JetGo.com. This is a classic case of a company adopting a company name in which the .com was ... read more ...
Tue 24th September 2013
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What GoDaddy’s merger of Afternic means for domainers - Domainers will see some immediate benefits and should keep a close eye on changes at the combined GoDaddy/Afternic. Last week GoDaddy announced that it acquired domain name aftermarket Afternic. My in-depth article about the acquisition covered some of what this means for domainers, but I think it makes sense to go into a bit more detail. Benefits for people who currently list on Afternic More sales. If you list your domains for sale on Afternic and opt-in to the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Axis TLD appears passed after WIPO decision - WIPO decides not to accept late response to objection. World Intellectual Property Organization has made a determination that it will not accept a late response to a Legal Rights Objection against .axis, thereby effectively killing off Saudi Telecom Company’s bid for the top level domain. Axis Communications AB filed the objection against the .axis application. Saudi Telecom then submitted its response to the objection too late. This resulted in ICANN Ombudsman ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
The association is called Sold, though anticipating it isn’t easy - If you use a generic name like Sold and don’t own Sold.com, it might be harder for people to find you. TechCrunch is reporting today about Sold, a company that apparently make selling your used stuff easy. The company has raised seed funding from Google Ventures, Greylock, and a couple other groups. Which is all well and good. But the company’s domain name is usesold.com. Sold.com, where I first went to find out more about the comapany, is owned by Auction.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
With .Sex, some-more explanation a ICDR doesn’t have the act together - Despite what the official list says, SX Registry lost its objection against .sex. So I’m going through the updated list of string confusion objection decisions when I think I’ve hit a great story: SX Registry SA has prevailed in its string confusion objection against the .sex domain name! This is a goldmine story for me. There are so many great headlines I could write about this one. So I start to write my story and do some research on the .sx country code as ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google beats Donuts in .Games tip turn domain name dispute - .Games domain names will likely be confused with .game domains, panelist rules. Donuts has lost another string confusion objection for a plural domain name, this time .games. Google, one of five applicants for the .game top level domain, argued that having both .games and .game as top level domain names would confuse internet users. It convinced the panelist of this, which means that Donuts’ uncontested application for .games is now contested. It will have to beat ... read more ...
Mon 23rd September 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Comparing private vs. final review new TLD auctions - In private auctions, applicants bid less than the valuation they place on the string. There have been two rounds of private auctions (that we know about) to settle top level domain contention sets. The first one included six TLDs and totaled $9.01 million. The second included 8 strings and totaled $9.65 million. That’s an average of $1.5 million per string in the first auction and $1.2 million in the second. So are the applicants in these auctions valuing the typical ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain name registry OpenRegistry picks adult 2M EUR financing - OpenRegistry, which operates .sx and is the registry provider for a number of new TLDs, has raised a round of funding. Domain name registry OpenRegistry announced today that it is raising 2M euro. The registry already provides technical services to run Saint Martin’s .sx domain name. 21 applicants for new top level domain names selected OpenRegistry to provide registry services, although a couple have withdrawn. Some of the bigger names selecting OpenRegistry include ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Viacom CEO loses domain brawl opposite cybersquatter - Philippe Dauman loses UDRP, but that may not be the last of it. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has lost a UDRP for the domain name philippepierredauman.com He lost the UDRP because he didn’t convince the panel that he had trademark rights in his own name. Panelist Richard G. Lyon followed the letter of the UDRP as well as precedent in coming to his decision. That was the right thing to do. But I also don’t hesitate to render my own opinion that the person who registered ... read more ...
 
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One some-more pointer that PayPal is about to buy Braintree Payments - Braintree domain names registered. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that PayPal is close to a deal to acquire Braintree Payments. Braintree handles payments for OpenTable, Uber Technologies and Airbnb, among others. If you need more proof that something is in the works, look no further than a flurry of recent domain name registrations. A handful of defensive domain name registrations have been undertaken at domain name registrar MarkMonitor, including: braintreepaymentssucks.com braintreepaymentssucks.net braintreesucks.com braintreesucks.net Some ... read more ...
Sat 21st September 2013
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Sedo completes the second many costly domain name transaction ever - Sedo completes domain transaction in “mid seven figures”. Sedo sent out a press release about its sales yesterday, as sort of a “don’t forget we sell more dollars worth of domains than Afternic” reminder in the wake of GoDaddy’s acquisition. About midway through the press release, which pointed out that it grabbed 9 of the top 10 spots on DNJournal’s list this week, the company mentioned: In addition to the sales publicly announced in DN Journal, Sedo ... read more ...
Fri 20th September 2013
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ICANN admits new TLD auctions are delayed - The first ICANN auctions to settle new top level domain contention sets could take place in the middle of November. In a new top level domain applicant update webinar yesterday, ICANN VP of gTLD Operations Christine Willett admitted that new TLD auctions won’t start in October as previously planned. The start date has been pushed to the middle of November. This shouldn’t come as any surprise to applicants, especially given the number of outstanding issues that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Over 10,000 annals now in Trademark Clearinghouse - Number of records in Trademark Clearinghouse doubles since the middle of July. As of the end of August, the Trademark Clearinghouse for new top level domain names has 10,398 trademark records. That’s double the amount as of the middle of July. Over 97% are for ASCII characters (e.g. the type of characters you’re reading on your screen right now). Only 270 records are for internationalized domain names. The top non-ASCII script so far is Han with 162 records. Cyrillic, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
AIDA Cruises loses domain name brawl to 2 year aged girl - Owner of Aida.me registered domain name for his daughter. They tried to take my domain away!Cruiseline AIDA Cruises has lost a UDRP it filed against the domain name Aida.me. It turns out the owner of the domain name registered it for his two year old daughter, Aida. The owner provided a copy of his daughter’s birth certificate as proof. He also pointed out that he registered domain names for his other three children. On the surface, this seems like a case that could ... read more ...
Thu 19th September 2013
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Breaking: GoDaddy acquires Afternic from NameMedia - Acquisition will make it easier for customers to buy domain names that are already registered. GoDaddy has acquired domain name sales platform Afternic from NameMedia in a move that will make it easier for people to buy domain names that are already registered. The acquisition also includes NameMedia’s domain name parking platform SmartName. The BuyDomains.com site and NameMedia’s domain name portfolio are not part of the acquisition. A simpler domain name purchase ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts loses another conflict to .Pets domain name - Another panelist finds that .pet and .pets are too similar to both be delegated as top level domain names How many pets are there?Apparently two panelists agree: .Pets and .Pet should be in a contention set because they’ll cause confusion amongst internet users. International Centre for Dispute Resolution just posted a decision (pdf) by panelist Richard Page for Google’s objection to Donuts’ application for .pets. Google argued that having both .pet and .pets ... read more ...
 
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Marchex shelves skeleton to spin off domains multiplication Archeo - Archeo will remain a division of Marchex instead of becoming its own publicly traded company. Marchex has canceled its plan to spin off its domain name business into a separate public company, at least for now. The company announced plans last November to spin off its domain business into a new company called Archeo. Marchex had long neglected its portfolio of over 200,000 domain names, and making it part of a separate company would allow it to better monetize the ... read more ...
Wed 18th September 2013
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What domain names CBS, JPMorgan, and 30 others bought final week - CBS and JPMorgan among the big names buying domain names in the aftermarket last week. Afternic sold just shy of $1 million worth of domain names last week. Here are some purchases by end users. St. John Cantius Church bought Cantius.com for $1,800; it already owns the .org. Waterloo, Iowa Marketing company Impact bought ImpactHealthcare.com for $1,850. Equestrian Stylist, a site for horse lovers, bought EquestrianConsulting.com for $1,200. Amana Villas in Bali ... read more ...
 
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Southwest Airlines bags BagsFlyFree.com domain name - Domain name complements no bag fee marketing efforts. Charging for bags has been the saving grace of the airline industry in recent years. Airlines that don’t charge for luggage – most notably Southwest Airlines – have done a lot to promote that they aren’t stiffing customers. Southwest has run a number of humorous commercials promoting that “Bags Fly Free”, and now it has the BagsFlyFree.com domain name to go with it. Until recently the domain name was ... read more ...
 
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Bright.com raises $14 million in Series B - Bright.com, sold for six figures in 2010, is being put to good use. Job search site Bright.com has raised $14 million in a Series B round. The Bright.com domain name sold through Sedo for $112,500 back in 2010. Looking at historical whois records, I’m not 100% sure that it was the company that’s currently operating at Bright.com that bought the domain name. The job search site launched the next year, in 2011. The domain name itself has a bit of history, with ... read more ...
 
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Verisign loses conflict opposite Dish’s .DTV tip turn domain name - Panelist says .DTV can coexist with .TV. Verisign has lost a String Confusion Objection against Dish DBS over the string .DTV. Verisign runs the registry for .TV, and argued that having .TV and .DTV as top level domain names would confuse the average internet user. Panelist Archibald Findlay turned in a rather lengthy (pdf) 23 page decision detailing both parties’ arguments, ultimately siding with Dish. Findlay has decided one other string confusion case, which ... read more ...
 
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MO.com domain name sells - Two letter domain name has sold. The MO.com domain name has sold, the website’s owners disclosed in a recent blog post. The site, which interviews business founders and asked “What’s your M.O.”, has relocated to BusinessInterviews.com. The website was founded by long time domain investor and entrepreneur Brian Null. Null lives in Missouri, which is abbreviated MO, but he decided to use the domain to mean “modus operandi”. Prior to starting MO.com, he founded ... read more ...
Tue 17th September 2013
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Tencent is latest to plea ICANN on new TLD objections - Company lost legal rights objections for weibo domain names. Chinese internet giant Tencent is the latest company to ask ICANN to reconsider a new top level domain objection decision. The company is challenging the legal rights objections brought by rival Sina against its applications for .微博 and .weibo. Sina was the only other applicant for these domain names. By winning the objections, it no longer faces other applicants and will likely obtain the top level ... read more ...
 
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CentralNic business indication will means lots of new TLD confusion - Hi Volker et al: The lawsuit is being continued; because Honourable Judge Lee, while being highly knowledgeable about Law, can’t be an expert in every circumstance presented. Much like Hospitals have Doctors finely trained tuned in specific medical processes, Courts can’t always forecast which “Doctor” is best suited to an issue. American Law is rapidly expanding, with regard to the Internet, of which the US regulates the primary TLD’s. Please read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_in_Internet_cases_in_the_United_States ... read more ...