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.

Wed 5th March 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
KennendyUniversity.com is Saved in UDRP - The registrant of KennedyUniversity.com successfully won a UDRP in which they did not respond, the true name was never given of the registrant and the complainant seemed completely inept. The complainant basically did not even have a trademark, they did not state what their relationship was to another party that had a trademark, and it seems like they were using the words college and university interchangeably. Robert Kennedy College v. Domain Name Proxy Service, Inc Case No. D2014-0031 1. The Parties The ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Go Daddy/Afternic Sales Total Just Over $2million for a week, led by LaughOutLoud.com -

GoDaddy and Afternic’s reportable weekly domain sales for a week of 2/24/14 – 3/2/14

Total domain sales for a week summed to $2,046,716.

The tip sale was laughoutloud.com during $20,800

W3.co led a non .com sales during $9,000

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Via: thedomains.com

Tue 4th March 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1.3 Million - 582 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.3 Million for the week of March 2, 2014. 50% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: footmarseille.com at 25,000 EUR · Top ccTLD: dental.ca at 22,600 USD · Top “other” TLD: bestcasino.info at 7,050 USD Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Madeness: ABB.com Files UDRP On 123.com & 222.com - The owners of the domain names 123.com and 222.com have been hit with a UDRP. The UDRP was filed by Abb Asea Brown Boverti  LTD which seems to be part of the ABB Group which own the domain name ABB.com and ABB.us with the The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center (the ADNDRC). According to Wikipedia.org, ABB is a multinational corporation headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, operating in robotics and mainly in the power and automation technology areas. It ranked 158th in the Forbes Ranking ... read more ...
 
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Scott Day & Berryhill Beat Back UDRP on 15 Year Old Domain iCan.com - The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center (the ADNDRC) just rejected Galaxy Rainbow Limited and Whole Person Development Institute Limited. of Hong Kong bid to grab the 15 year old domain name iCAN.com from Scott Day’s Digimedia.com who was represented by John Berryhill. However the panel did not find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) although the domain was found to be generic and registered 10 years before the trademark of the complainant Here are the relevant facts and findings by the ... read more ...
 
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Flexcoin The Bitcoin Bank Shuts Down After Losing 896 Bitcoins - Another Bitcoin site has gone bust, Flexcoin which called itself the Bitcoin bank is out of business. They posted this on their website: Flexcoin is shutting down. On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet. The attacker made off with 896 BTC, dividing them into these two addresses: 1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu 1QFcC5JitGwpFKqRDd9QNH3eGN56dCNgy6 As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our ... read more ...
 
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.Build Hires Tim Switzer, Formerly of Neustar and DotGreen As Head of Operations - George Minardos, Founder and CEO of .BUILD, announced today that Tim Switzer, formerly of Neustar and DotGreen, is joining .BUILD as head of operations and registrar relations. Switzer will team up with Minardos, Tom Brackey, ARI Services and the rest of the .BUILD team to bring the global building industry on-line via the .BUILD domain name. Minardos commented, “We are excited to have Tim join us.  He brings many years of experience and talent within the domain name industry.  With his history ... read more ...
 
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TLDH Formally Announces Appointment Of Elliot Noss Of Tucows As “Non-Executive Director” - According to a press release out today, the Board of Top Level Domain Holdings announced the formal appointment of Mr Elliot Noss as a non-executive director of TLDH with immediate effect. Mr Noss is President and CEO of Tucows, Inc (NASDAQ:TCX), one of the larger domain registrars, and has served in such capacity since the completion of Tucows, Inc’s merger with Tucows Delaware in August 2001. From May 1999 until completion of the merger in August 2001, Mr Noss served as President and Chief Executive ... read more ...
 
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DiscoverIndia.com updated and now shutting cost is $5,047 - Earlier today we wrote about the DiscoverIndia.com auction closing at $106,000. Go Daddy has updated the closing price, when I checked my watchlist  it now shows $5,047 as the closing price. They must have noticed something not right and cancelled the bids that were above $5,047. It looks like it was bidder 11 that they had a problem with. I will speak to Paul Nicks and see if he can shed any new light on the topic. 2014/03/03 09:54 AM (PST) 2014/03/03 10:57 AM (PST) Bidder 13 $5,047 Comment: Proxy ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Apartments.com sells for $585 Million in Cash - Apartments.com the business was sold for $585 million. The current owner put out a press release announcing the sale today. The registrant info has not yet changed according to whois records. Apartments.com was registered in 1996, interestingly the domain had dropped two times before. The seller Classified Ventures also owns Cars.com Here is the press release: Classified Ventures, LLC (“CV”), a leading provider of digital marketing solutions in the automotive and apartment rental categories, ... read more ...
Mon 3rd March 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DiscoverIndia.com closes during $106,000 on Go Daddy Auctions - DiscoverIndia.com closed at $106,000 today on Go Daddy Auctions. The 15 year old domain had 139 bids.  There were 14 bidders with the auction ending in a duel between bidder 11 and the eventual winner bidder 13. It is worth noting that DiscoverIndia.net is a developed site, along with TheDiscoverIndia.com and Discover-India.in also developed. Estibot assigned a value of $580. Now the question is will it get paid for ? 2014/03/03 10:46 AM (PST) 2014/03/03 10:57 AM (PST) Bidder 13 $106,000 Comment: Proxy ... read more ...
 
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Wired: The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster - Wired is out today with an excellent piece by Robert McMillan on the Rise and Fall of Mt.Gox. For anyone interested in what happened with Mt.Gox or just Bitcoin in general, this is worth your time. The article touches upon how Karpeles was not equipped to be a CEO, insiders who knew things would go bad, and how there were a lot of controls not in place, that should have been in place. From the article: The King of Bitcoin The 28-year-old Karpeles was born in France, but after spending some time ... read more ...
 
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Apple Announces Car Play Without Securing a .Com - Apple announced a new  iPhone in car integration system and named it Car Play. Vlad Sanov reported for The Verge As was rumored on Friday, Apple is today finally ready to launch a new iPhone integration setup for car infotainment systems. Calling it CarPlay, the Cupertino company claims it’s “designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car.” CarPlay is built primarily around the use of Siri voice commands and prompts, providing an ... read more ...
 
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Afilias Wins .Green To Add To Its Collection Of New gTLD Colors - United TLD Holdco Ltd which is owned by Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) has withdrawn its application for the new gTLD .Green leaving Afilias as the sole applicant for the .Green Extension. Last week it was revealed that some private auctions had been settled and Minds + Machines announced they had withdrawn their application for .Green, but we didn’t know who won the .Green string until now. With the addition of  .Green Afilias seems to have almost all of the colors of the rainbow as they are the only ... read more ...
 
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20 .Guru Sites Make Alexa’s Top 1M List - Its been only a few week since .Guru fully launched and already sites built on .Guru domains have cracked the Alexa Top 1 Million domain mark. Alexa.org ranks websites based on estimated traffic each site receives. I went through the Alexa top 1,000,000 list today which ranks websites on the basis of traffic and found 20 .Guru domain names in the Alexa Top 1M list. The highest ranked .Guru site is searchengines.Guru which has an Alexa rank of 14,025 Other .Guru on the list are not surprising domains ... read more ...
 
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Web.com Officially Announces The Acquisition of SnapNames.com - Web.com Group, Inc. (WWWW) officially announced today that it has acquired SnapNames from KeyDrive S.A. Shares are down over 2% in early trading today. The questions yet to be answered is how will the acquisition effect where expiring domain names from Web.com registrars, including NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com will be going. All expired domains of Netsol where going to SnapNames.com until it was acquired by Oversee.net, the company that sold SnapNames.com to Keysystems. Once Oversee.net ... read more ...
 
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iSchool Will Make Their Proposal to End U.S. Control of ICANN in Brazil - It is no secret that the U.S. having full control over ICANN has rubbed a lot of foreign governments the wrong way. There have been a whole host of proposals on the table as to who and how the Internet should be managed. The latest proposal which will be submitted first in Singapore and then Brazil, comes from the School of Information Studies or iSchool. They posted their intentions tonight on their website located here From the article: Researchers at the School of Information Studies (iSchool) ... read more ...
 
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Top10.com purchased in 2010 for $1million in Cash and Equity, Receives $8 Million in Funding - Tech Crunch reported about an hour ago that Top10.com received $8 million in Series B funding. The article also touched upon when the domain Top10.com was purchased back in 2010. Frank Michlick from Domain Name News had the exact facts back in 2010 on the deal. From Domain Name News: Incubator Idealab sold the domain name Top10.com for $200,000 USD in cash and a 7% equity stake in the new Top10.com Media Ltd. company. Idealab founder Bill Gross will join the advisory board of the company. Top10.com ... read more ...
Sun 2nd March 2014
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15 Year Old AGL.com Saved In UDRP; But 1 Panelist Wanted To Give It To The TM Holder - AGL Energy Limited of Melbourne, Australia just lost its attempt to grab the 15 year old domain name AGL.com. ESQwire.com represented the domain owner John M. Van John. Its a pretty interesting case because one member of the three member panel, Andrew F. Christie seemed to apply a new standard to a generic domains subject to a trademarked and wanted to give the domain to trademark holder,  the more interesting of which we highlighted in Bold below. Moreover the panel outright rejected the doctrine ... read more ...
 
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.Guru Tops 40,000 Registrations; Not Bad For A TLD Donuts Did Not Have In Its Top 50% - The new gTLD .Guru just topped 40,000 registrations making it the most successful new gTLD to launch. .Photography is the second most popular new gTLD with almost 25,000 registrations. .Tattoo is the least registered new extension, fully launched to date, still under 1,000 registrations. I had a chance to chat with Dan Schindler of Donuts the registry that owns .Guru as well as almost every new gTLD launched to date who told me a couple of weeks ago based on Donuts internal projections, .Guru was ... read more ...
 
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Google Starting To Show Full Restaurant Menu in Search Results - Another potential risk with very specific niche gtlds is that something can come along and change the game. Something that has nothing to do with domain names can still come along and affect the niche extension. The Apple iPhone and its .com button along with how smartphones easily rendered a website on a phone was a big hit to .mobi. The .menu extension has already been delegated and four companies are vying to run .restaurant. Tech Crunch did a post yesterday which expanded on something I saw ... read more ...
Sat 1st March 2014
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.Uno Reserved Domains & Rackspace, Microsoft, Google, Fox, Univision & Amazon Grab Domains - .Uno is now in Sunrise and the zone file reflects a list of over 100 domain names that have either been reserved by the registry or taken already in Sunrise. The registry so far has only reserved 30 of the 100 domains they are entitled to but you can see that some of the biggest companies in the world are registering their brands with a .Uno extension These are the domain names that have been reserved by the .uno registry: buy.uno conectar.uno connect.uno domain.uno domainia.uno domains.uno domains.uno dominios.uno dot.uno dot.uno elinternetenespanol.uno espanol.uno estamos.uno event.uno events.uno first.uno founder.uno get.uno iam.uno latin.uno latino.uno number.uno numerum.uno primeiro.uno registro.uno registry.uno spanish.uno unite.uno weare.uno yosoy.uno These ... read more ...
 
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Cisco Offering $300,000 Prize to Secure The Internet of Things - We have written in the past about all the money flowing into the Internet of Things and the projected revenue companies like Cisco are forecasting. We broke the news about Cisco acquiring IOE.com in stealth mode back in January and now Cisco is offering a prize for securing the Internet of Things. Ellen Messmer wrote on NetworkWorld.com, San Francisco — Cisco today kicked off a contest with $300,000 in prize money that challenges security experts around the world to put together ways to secure ... read more ...
Fri 28th February 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
Cybersquatter Now Owes Donald Trump $32K Due To 4 Domain Registrations - According to an article just posted by the NYpost.com, A “”Canarsie cybersquatter who registered domain names related to Donald Trump and used them to skewer the real estate magnate must pay him $32,000 in damages, a Brooklyn judge ruled””J. Taikwok Yung first drew Trump’s rage in 2007 when he registered four websites — trumpindia.com, trumpbeijing.com, trumpabudhabi.com and trumpmumbai.com.” “The chronic domain collector — who lives with his mom and has $250 in his bank account ... read more ...
 
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URS Filed On Branson.Guru This Could Be A Game Changer For The New gTLD’s - A Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) was filed today on the domain name Branson.Guru This is the first URS that has been filed which in my opinion should not be granted. The complainant is not listed but based on recent activity I’m going to assume its Richard Branson CEO of Virgin. The problem is that there is also a city by the name of Branson, which is in Missouri, and a pretty large tourist attraction. The official site for the city is CityofBranson.org which has grown to be a large tourist destination ... read more ...