Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Thu 20th March 2014
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1st URS Denied: Panel Gets It Right & Denies URS on Branson.Guru - For the first time a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) complaint has been denied. URS panelist Douglas M. Isenberg Denied Virgin Enterprises URS on the domain name Branson.Guru. The domain was registered by Lawrence Fain of Chicago who didn’t even bother to respond Here is the decision of the panel: Complainant has provided the following explanatory text, in toto, in its Complaint (subject to the 500-word limit specified in paragraph 1.2.7 of the URS): The Complainant is Virgin Enterprises Limited ... read more ...
 
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.CO Internet S.A.S Acquired for $109 Million - Neustar traded on the NYSE under the symbol NSR has a market cap of roughly $2.16 billion, today after the close they announced the acquistion of the company behind the .CO extension. Neustar is acquiring  .CO Internet S.A.S for $109 million. Neustar recorded $4 million in revenue for its role as the back-end provider for .CO Internet, which will be eliminated upon consolidation. Neustar is proud to announce the acquisition of .@dotco .CO Internet will expand Neustar’s registry services http://t.co/xpv8XLDRHe — ... read more ...
 
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Disturbing: 12 Year Old Hobbex.com Registered 4 Years Before Trademark Lost In UDRP - Hobbex AB of Borås, Sweden, just won a UDRP on the domain name Hobbex.com which is owned by Vertical Axis Inc. The case is disturbing because  the domain holder registered the domain four years before the trademark holder got their trademark yet the majority of the three member panel gave the domain to the trademark holder finding that they used the “trademark for many years before it secured its registration”. Moreover the trademark holder registered it in 2006 and waited until late 2013  ... read more ...
 
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Another Banner Day For Domains As Total Adds is Almost 65,000; 35K From .Com - Domain name registrations continue to grow with a bunch of new gTLD going live and as people continue to register more of the orginal TLD’s .com, .net and .org Yesterday new domain registrations over all TLD’s (not counting ccTLD’s) grew by a net of 64,430 domain name .Berlin added 4,408 new registrations on the day after it went live. A few new gTLD came out with their initial numbers: .Company had 6,228 registrations .Center had  5,279 registrations .Systems had 2,934 .Academy had 2,591 .Management ... read more ...
 
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Be Careful of Phishing Attack to Gain Google Credentials - Be careful using Google Docs and Google Drive as Symantec discovered a new phishing attack that is looking to get your Google log in credientials. Afterdawn.com covered the recent finding: Researchers over at security firm Symantec have come across a new advanced phishing attack aimed at stealing your Google credentials. The new attack specifically targets Google Docs and Google Drive users. An email will hit your inbox with a subject line of “Documents” or similar, claiming there is an ‘important ... read more ...
Wed 19th March 2014
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Frank Schilling’s Registrar Is Live; The Good & The Bad - Frank Schilling just rolled out Version 1 of his long anticipated registrar under Uniregistry as it went live today. Uniregistrar.com is the name of the registrar but its located at Uniregisty.com. The registrar which was obviously built for the new gTLD’s, or as Frank like to call them the new G’,  is a bare bone’s registrar. Its not glamorous in design and doesn’t offer a lot (or any) up-sells at the moment by design. We got any early preview of the registrar and had a chance to chat with ... read more ...
 
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15 Year Old Quebec.com Owned By Anything.com Saved In UDRP - The government of Quebec just lost its bid to grab the domain name Quebec.com, but the domain owner failed to get a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Ruling. If you’re in to extremely long proper names,  the complainant in the UDRP is “Ministre des Relations internationales, de la Francophonie et du Commerce extérieur (Minister of International Relations, La Francophonie and External Trade), acting in this proceeding for and on behalf of the Government of Québec, Québec, Canada” The domain ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Last Resort Contention Auctions Look Like a Go With 1st Planned For Jun 4th - ICANN just published a schedule of contention resolution Last Resort Auction and they start on June 4th with a goal of having 20 a month and resolving all of them in 1o months. This should push many applicants to go into a private auction where the funds go to the other applicants or in the RightoftheDot.com model even to Charities and other non-profits. There is a schudule of auctions and 10 pages of very firm rules on how the Last Resort Auctions will be conducted. One of the advantages of private ... read more ...
 
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One of The Worlds Best Domain; Chat.com Is Sold By CBS Interactive - One of the great domain names in the world, Chat.com was just sold. The domain name was owned by CBS Interactive, Inc. which acquired the domain  it when it purchased Cnet in June 2008. We reported last year that the company sold another killer domain it acquired in the  Cnet.com deal, Events.com The deal was co-brokered by the Domain Hall of Fame Nominee Larry Fischer of GetYourDomain.com and digital DNA. The domain now under under privacy and the sale is under NDA. The buyer of the domain which ... read more ...
 
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Record Number of Companies Sponsor DomainFest2014 - The organizers of Domain Fest which is being held from March 31 to April 2, 2014 at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California. just put out a press release a few moments ago that they “have a record number of sponsors this year for the event”. “We are thrilled by the depth of support from our sponsors this year,” said Dwayne Walker, Senior Vice President of Oversee.net.  “With a nine-year track record, our DomainFest sponsors understand the value of connecting with this extraordinary ... read more ...
 
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Strickling Refines Last Weeks Announcement On ICANN: No Government-Led Solution Will Be Accepted - Lawrence E. Strickling the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator seems to have backed off the statement he made last Friday, that the US was ready to let ICANN go out of United States control. In an announcement he made today Stickling said: Our announcement has led to some misunderstanding about our plan with some individuals raising concern that the U.S. government is abandoning the Internet. Nothing could be further from the truth. This announcement in no ... read more ...
 
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Marchex, Endurance Added To NASDAQ Internet Index - NASDAQ (Nasdaq:NDAQ) announced the addition and deletion of companies to the NASDAQ Internet Index® (Nasdaq:QNET), which will become effective prior to market open on Monday, March 24, 2014. The Index is designed to track the performance of a set of companies engaged in internet-related businesses. Two of the company’s added are two in the domain industry Marchex (Nasdaq:MCHX) and Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc (Nasdaq:EIGI) Twenty-two securities will be added to the Index: Benefitfocus, ... read more ...
 
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Well We Just Told You These IDN’s Are Hot: Chinese Goverment Buys 20,500 Domains - We published a post earlier this morning about the TLD Registry Ltd, and its two new Chinese IDN new gTLD’s  Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网). We interviewed  A representative of the registry who predicted that they was a greater than 50% chance that both of these extensions would be in the top 5 of all new gTLD’s after its Landrush completed and now the registry announced overnight that it has contracted with the Chinese central government’s own registrar in ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Loses 5% Market Share of New gTLD’s As .Berlin Changes The Game - Godaddy.com share of the new gTLD market dropped 5% overnight after the domain extension for .Berlin launched getting almost 32,000 registrations German based registrar, InterNetX said they were able to secure 81% of all preregistrations for its clients, “making it the #1 registrar for .BERLIN domains in the B2B sector”. Godaddy.com which had just under 40% of the new gTLD market as a domain name registrar share is now sitting right below 35%. Many German based registrars benefited from the success ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Filed On 17 Year Old Domain HoldOn.com By Owners Of Holdon.Info - A UDRP has just been filed against the domain name HoldOn.com The domain name has an original registration according DomainTools.com of March 18th 1997 making the domain 14 years old. However Screenshots has results for HoldOn.com going back to 1994. The domain name is owned by a Dharrshinee Naidu of New York. The domain is parked and according to Screenshots has been parked since at least 1996. Amicus Trade AB of Sweden filed the complaint. According to the website of the company which is located ... read more ...
 
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.Berlin Does over 31,000 Registration In 1st Day; 20K in 1st Hour -   The first city new gTLD launched yesterday and .Berlin did over 31,000 registrations. .Berlin first day total was 31,956 making it immediately the 2nd most popular new gTLD only to .Guru which has around 44,500 registrations. By contrast .Guru only did 9,500 registrations on its first day of general availability. According to InterNetX a German based registrar, 20,000 registration were done in the 1st hour of availability. .Berlin,  as we have told you was one of the groups that really pushed ... read more ...
 
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Why A Chinese IDN Maybe One Of The Top 5 Most Registered New gTLD’s & How You Can Play It - Yesterday we told you about Sedo.com having online bidding for the live auction of the Chinese IDN for Online (.在线) which will be held in  Macau starting at 11 a.m. Friday local Macau Time (03:00 UTC) March 21, 2014 (Thursday March 20th at 11pm EST). Personally I don’t own any IDN’s but this one may make me change my mind. For one as most know, China has more internet users than the population of the United States, 618 million as of December 2013. About 2 weeks ago LinkedIn launched its ... read more ...
 
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Ladas Domains Selected HEXONET’s Registrar Operations Center (RegistrarOC®) - HEXONET  today announced that Ladas Domains LLC (Ladas) has selected HEXONET’s Registrar Operations Center (RegistrarOC®) as the domain name service platform for its renowned trademark protection and corporate domain management division. The combination of industry leading expertise and experience managing digital corporate assets and brands for high profile clientele with a state of the art domain registration system will ensure Ladas’ high profile clients are protected as the Internet Corporation ... read more ...
Tue 18th March 2014
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Sedo Two Weeks Of Transactions Total $2.8 Million - Sedo, just published its sales for two weeks For the week of March 3rd – 9th 677 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.3 Million 50% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales for the week of March 3rd-9th were: ·         Top .coms: jamrock.com at 68,750 USD ·         Top ccTLD: homify.fr at 20,000 EUR ·         Top “other” TLD: hff.org at 10,000 USD For the week of March 10th- 16th: 691 transactions ... read more ...
 
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Frank Schilling Gets Hit With UDRP On a Domain Name ClearCare.com - One of Frank Schilling Name Administration domain names has been hit with a UDRP. The domain name ClearCare.com has been owned by Name Administration since at least 2008 according to DomainTools.com The complainant is not listed but Alcon a publicly traded company (ACL) makes a contact lens cleaning productknown as Clear Care, which it uses the URL Clearcaresolution.com. There are multiple live trademarks for the term ClearCare in the US by: Arch Chemicals, Inc. ClearCare, Inc Novartis AG Group Health ... read more ...
 
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QY.com Sells For $100K: Afternic/GoDaddy Sells $2.1 Million In Domain Names - Afternic/GoDaddy weekly sales sales report for domain names for the week of March 10, 2104 – March 16th, 2014 totaled $2.1 Million According to the report the two letter .com QY.com sold for $100,000 which we have now confirmed as having sold on Godaddy.com It is the lowest price for a two letter .com that I have seen in many years. The domain name is under privacy at Godaddy and is not resolving. According to Screenshots.com the site has been inactive or parked since December 2008 The top non-com ... read more ...
 
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Gaia.Tv sole for $22,372 On Sedo - The domain name Gaia.tv sold for $22,372, according to the former owner of the domain. The word Gaia according to Wikipedia.org is from Ancient Greek meaning “land” or “earth”; Gaia was the great mother of all: the primal Greek Mother Goddess; creator and giver of birth to the Earth and all the Universe; the heavenly gods, the Titans, and the Giants were born to her. The buyer appears to the same company that owns Gaiam.com a Yoga and Fitness site and the domain name GaiamTV.com which  ... read more ...
 
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PR Trying To Sell A Domain: “I Think we Can Convince The Owners to Sell for $500K” - I saw this press release that was published today for the word Gamely.com which appears to be for sale and the subject of the press release. Not a horrible domain, but certain a very bad pitch in my opinion when it comes to price: “We are talking about the domain name Gamely.com. We asked the domain name expert Paul Wilson what figure he sees on this domain name and this is what he said: “I think that I can convince the owners to sell for US $500,000.” Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
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.Club Teams Up With TLD Registry For The China Market - According to a press release out this morning, .CLUB Domains, LLC, the company formed to own and operate the new “.CLUB” top level domain, and TLD Registry the company behind the new gTLD for the Chinese IDN for Online (.在线) as well as the registry for the new gTLD (中文网) (Dot Chinese Website) have teamed up to market .Club to the China market. the new gTLD for the Chinese IDN for Online (.在线) as well as the registry for the new gTLD (中文网) (Dot Chinese Website) should have ... read more ...
 
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Baby.CN Sells for $410,872 - NiceNic.net did a post on their site about a another group of big Chinese sales. These were led by Baby.CN which sold for $410,872 USD. Baby.cn was the highest selling domain name at 2.53 million cny(US$410,872); QiLu.com ended in bidding 1.98 million cny(US$321,552) and ranked second to Baby.cn, QiLu is another name for “Shangdong”, a big province of China; the highest bid for ShunFeng.com was 1.06 million cny(US$172,144) and ShunFeng is a famous express company in China.Other interesting domain ... read more ...