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.

Tue 30th July 2013
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Amazon.com, HP, Ford among those lobbying Washington about domain names - Big companies join domain heavyweights in lobbying U.S. government about domain name issues. It’s been a couple years since I’ve done a round up of how much domain name companies are spending on lobbying in Washington. I just ran an updated analysis and made two key observations. First, major domain name companies including VeriSign and Go Daddy are spending less on lobbying than they used to. Second, a lot of non-domain name companies are lobbying about domain ... read more ...
 
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Food Network loses food quarrel for .food tip turn domain name - Scripps wanted to claim universal rights to the term “food” on the web. The company behind the Food Network and Food.com, Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc., has lost an objection against a rival applicant for the top level domain name .food. In the objection against Dot Food, LLC, Scripps tried to argue that it basically owns the word “food”, and that consumers visiting a second level domain name under .food would assume that it was associated with the company. Respondent’s ... read more ...
 
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Domain Name Association creates new TLD authority during WhatDomain.org - Domain Name Association publishes educational site to promote new TLDs. Domain Name Association (DNA), a non-profit advocacy group representing domain name registries, registrars, resellers, and registry service providers, has launched an updated site at WhatDomain.org. WhatDomain.org explains what a domain name is, the current state of top level domain names, and the new types of top level domains that will start appearing on the web later this year. The site is ... read more ...
 
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Donuts peaceful to send 68 strings to auction in August - New top level domain applicant commits more strings to private auction model. Donuts, the largest applicant for new top level domains, has committed up to 68 strings to the next new TLD “private” auction held by Applicant Auction next month. In the first auction held in May, Donuts committed 63 domains. In order to go to auction, all applicants for the string must agree. Only six of the 63 went to auction, and Donuts won just one of the domains. The average bidding ... read more ...
Mon 29th July 2013
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Law organisation claims general authorised domain name is cybersquatting - Law firm with the generic name “Outside Legal Counsel” sues Dan Rubin over OutsideLegalCounsel.com domain name. [Update: the case was resolved.] A law firm called Outside Legal Counsel Plc has sued JustDropped.com and its owner Dan Rubin, claiming he is cybersquatting on OutsideLegalCounsel.com. At first I thought the attorneys for the case made a mistake, as it appeared someone acting as outside general counsel (a common name for an outside law firm working on ... read more ...
 
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JustFab.com sues Fab.com for infringing the trademark - Two fashion startups argue over which one is the most fabulous. This legal battle is absolutely fabulous! Just Fabulous, the company behind online fashion site JustFab.com, has sued white-hot e-commerce site Fab.com. Just Fabulous claims that Fab.com is infringing its Just Fab marks. The two sites are heavyweights. JustFab.com has raised over $100 million. Fab.com has raised over $300 million. Fab.com started as a social networking site, but later changed directions ... read more ...
 
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How right-to-left domain names work in practice - Depending on your language, new TLDs might be about new opportunities to the left of the dot. When ICANN unveiled the list of top level domain name applications at a media event in London last summer, some in the community were upset that Arabic IDNs were presented left to right instead of right to left. Some scripts, including Arabic and Hebrew, are read from right to left. This really hit home for me a couple weeks ago when I was writing about the registry agreement ... read more ...
 
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Gmail vs. Snail Mail: Google wins plea by USPS - USPS’ challenge to Google over .mail top level domain is denied. Last week, a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist delivered some bad news to the The United States Postal Service: its challenge to Amazon.com’s application to run the .mail top level domain was denied. Now the group’s challenge to Google’s bid to run .mail has also been returned to sender. The USPS suggested that it has some sort of rights to the term “mail”, in part because ... read more ...
 
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Matt Cutts releases new video about regulating ccTLDs for general purposes - Cutts explains when Google decides to make a ccTLD global. Google’s SEO/Webspam leader Matt Cutts has released a new video about using a country code top level domain name for a website not targeted to that country. His message is the same that Google has been giving for many years, but he added some more color about how the company decides what should become generic. Google makes some domains globally targeted because they’ve been widely adopted for global use ... read more ...
 
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Oversee.net launches TrafficMatch to representation domain trade to advertisers - TrafficMatch promotes domain name traffic to advertisers. Oversee.net, the parent company of DomainSponsor, somewhat quietly launched TrafficMatch last month. TrafficMatch pitches the company’s 300 million monthly visitors direct to advertisers – and a big part of that 300 million is domain name traffic. Here’s how the TrafficMatch website explains it: TrafficMatch is a leading provider of high value online traffic. With nearly 300 million visitors passing ... read more ...
Sun 28th July 2013
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Frank Schilling formulation a domain name conference? - Schilling files trademark application related to domain conferences. Is Frank Schilling planning to hold domain name conferences in the future? The thought has at least crossed his mind – if not gone further. George Kirikos spotted that Schilling filed an intent-to-use trademark application (pdf) for iNEX back in April. Here’s the class of goods listed on the application: Educational services, namely, arranging and organizing conferences in the field of internet ... read more ...
Sat 27th July 2013
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Verisign files initial UDRP given 2007 - .Com registry wants a .com. Verisign, the company that runs the .com registry, has filed a UDRP against a .com domain name. [Update: the registrant handed the domain name over and the case was terminated.] It’s the first UDRP the company has filed since it went after verisigngateway.com in 2007. The filing targets PoweredByVerisign.com, which was registered at GoDaddy last year by someone in Switzerland. Verisign uses the domain DomainsPoweredByVerisign.com to ... read more ...
Fri 26th July 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Arrested Development domain name joke - The challenge of finding a good domain name is illustrated perfectly on Arrested Development. I’m finally getting to the end of the Netflix season of Arrested Development (no binge viewing for me!). I’m not going to play spoiler here, but one of the episodes discusses domain names. George Michael is working on a new app with his roommate and is having trouble coming up with a name. George is on the phone, and it’s not clear if he’s talking to a domain registrar ... read more ...
 
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What’s a marketplace distance for a tip turn domain? - Can new TLDs increase demand for domain names, or will they merely take a percentage of the existing market? A few weeks ago Dan Warner posted an analysis of sports related top level domain name applications. He compared the strings applied for (e.g. .baseball, .football) to how many of the 100 million + .com domains already registered include that term (e.g. BaseballFan.com and FootballGames.com). He found that many, including rugby and cricket, had fewer than 15,000 ... read more ...
Thu 25th July 2013
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Trademark frontrunner TLDDOT GmbH loses .GMBH objection - Company that trademarked .GMBH loses legal rights objection to competing applicant. TLDDOT GmbH, an applicant for the .gmbh domain name that has tried to “frontrun” the new TLD process with trademarks, has lost a legal rights objection against competing applicant InterNetWire Web-Development GmbH. TLDDOT’s objection was quite amazing, really. The company basically told the panel that it had filed trademarks and starting marketing .gmbh early on, so it should ... read more ...
 
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Sports training association fouls out in D1.com domain name grab - Company fails to take D1.com domain name from rightful owner. D1 Sports Holdings, LLC has lost a UDRP complaint it filed against the domain name D1.com. As you can imagine, D1.com was registered a long time ago. It was registered in 1995 and belongs to New Dimension One Spas, Inc, which acquired the assets of Dimension One Spas earlier this year. Get it? Dimension One, or D1? Apparently D1 Sports Holdings, which claims it started using the D1 mark in 2003, didn’t ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media successfully defends .CAM TLD opposite objection - Company defends one objection for .cam, still faces a string confusion objection. Demand Media subsidiary United TLD Holdco Ltd has defended itself against a legal rights objection over its .cam top level domain name application. AC Webconnecting Holding B.V., a competing applicant for the string, based its objection on community trademark registrations for “.cam” as a word as well as a .cam logo. It also said it is the controlling shareholder of a company that ... read more ...
 
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.Song and .YellowPages new TLD objections denied - Two more objections fail, bringing total to 18. World Intellectual Property Organization panelists have denied two more Legal Rights Objections to new top level domain name applications. The latest failed objections are for .song and .yellowpages. Of the 18 determined cases so far, the objectors have lost in each of them. That has a lot to do with panelists and applicants sniffing out “trademark frontrunning” in which an entity applied for (and gained, in some ... read more ...
 
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Verisign announces another .net cost hike - 25 days after prices went up, Verisign announces another price increase. The wholesale registry fee for .net domain names just increased from $5.11 to $5.62 on July 1. Today, Verisign announced another price hike that will increase the price to $6.18. The increase will go into effect on February 1, 2014 following a six month waiting period. Verisign has the contractual right to increase the fees for .net domain name registrations by up to 10% each year during the ... read more ...
Wed 24th July 2013
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Misguided UDRP complainant #3,267 - Guy starts company in 2011, files UDRP against domain registered in 1999. Sigh. Another day, another completely baseless UDRP. This one comes courtesy of WowWe, Inc., which was represented by the law firm Lewis Barnes. WowWe began using its mark in 2011. The owner of WowWe.com registered the domain name in 1999. Yet, amazingly, WowWe argued that the disputed domain name was registered for the purpose of selling the domain name registration to it for valuable consideration ... read more ...
 
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Aptus Tech nailed for perplexing to steal domain name from Frank Schilling - Panel determines that Aptus Tech engaged in reverse domain name hijacking. Last month I asked why people didn’t do a bit of research before filing a UDRP against Frank Schilling. The specific case that prompted my article was Klipz.com, which had just been filed. The decision is in, and it’s clear that, not only did the complainant not research who owned the domain, but he didn’t research much about UDRP, either. A three person National Arbitration Forum panel ... read more ...
 
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Royal baby domain name registrations spike - GoDaddy reports increase in domain registrations related to baby. I have to admit, I don’t really get this royal baby nonsense. But it’s still the top news story today, even on the U.S. version of CNN.com. Punters* are lining up to cash in on the name of Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s baby. GoDaddy reports that, as of yesterday evening, it had seen a spike of 2x-4x (in the previous 24 hours) in domain names registered that included possible names of ... read more ...
 
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What domains L’Oreal and others bought during Sedo final week - L’Oreal is one of end user domain buyers at Sedo. Sedo had some solid end user domain name sales last week. Here’s the list. L’Oreal bought Beaute.fr and beauté.fr for 17,650 EUR each. Yotta Ltd, which sells technology and services to the infrastructure and highways market, bought Yotta.co.uk for 3,600 GBP. Hmmm…did Biz Stone’s new company Jelly buy Jelly.co for 4,900 EUR. Genetipetz, which sells stuffed animals that combine more than one animal, bought ... read more ...
Tue 23rd July 2013
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True Religion seeks improved domain name by WIPO action - Company files complaint for domain name TrueReligion.com Publicly traded True Religion (NASDAQ: TRLG), maker of premium denim products, has a really long domain name: TrueReligionBrandJeans.com. Without doubt, a lot of fans of the brand type in TrueReligion.com when trying to find its website. So the company has filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization to try to get the domain name TrueReligion.com. TrueReligion.com was registered back in 1998. It’s ... read more ...
 
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SedoMLS gets some-more domain extensions with .eu and CentralNic deals - Sedo adds three ccTLDs to distribution network. SedoMLS, the domain listing distribution system for Sedo, has signed up new registries that will enable it to sell more types of domain names. Last week Sedo announced a partnership with EURid, the .eu registry, added the .eu domain extension to the SedoMLS Premium network. [Sedo was able to do this because EURid, the .eu registry, made its transfer system automatic.] Today the company announced a deal with CentralNic ... read more ...