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 4th December 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ALMC.com Saved In UDRP Decided By Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center Finding Domain Is Generic - The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center, in a one member UDRP decision rejected the attempt of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council to grab the generic domain name ALMC.com The domain holder was represented by David E. Weslow of Wiley Rein LLP. Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel: The Complainant is a statutory body corporate in Hong Kong, established in 1966 pursuant to the Hong Kong Trade Development Council Ordinance Its functions include the promotion and ... read more ...
 
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Namejet.com Reports $375,000 in Sales For November - Namejet.com issued the top reportable sales for November 2013 which totaled some $375,000 in sales. There were higher sales on my list but I guess they weren’t paid for and closed by the end of the month and therefore not included.     <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Marchex Proposes To Offer $50 Million More In Shares & Allow Insiders To Sell Up To 15% of Holdings - According to a 8-K form filed by Marchex, Inc. (“Marchex”) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”)  the company may sell up to $50 million of its Class B common stock, at prices and on terms that Marchex will decide at the time of any offering. In addition, under the shelf registration, certain of Marchex’s stockholders may offer for resale to the public from time to time in one or more offerings up to 3.5 million shares of Marchex’s Class B common stock owned by them ... read more ...
Tue 3rd December 2013
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.2 Million Led By Bitok.com - Over the past week, 670 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.2 Million dollars. This amounts to $62.1 million in year-to-date sales revenue. Over 45% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: · Top .coms: bitok.com at 15,000 USD · Top ccTLD: batterie.fr at 14,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: ltw.org at 12,400 USD   Here is a list of all reportable sales: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy/Afternic Sales Top $1.33 Million in Holiday Week - GoDaddy and Afternic’s just issued its reportable weekly domain sales for the holiday week of 11/25/13 – 12/1/13 Total domain sales for the week summed to $1,335,793 All sales were led to Jafer.com which sold for $15,000 My personal favorite of the week is healthydrink.com which sold for just just over $2K.     <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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1001.com Sells For $100,000 on Sedo.com - Another record setting numeric .com domain sale just crossing the Sedo.com wire The domain name 1001.com just sold for $100,000 The last time the domain name wasn’t under privacy was 2008 when the registered owner was  1001 Media Group of  Sherman Oaks, California Last week Frank Schilling’s Name Administration sold 88888.com for $245,000 The third highest reported domain name sale of 2013 belongs to another numeric .com, 114.com Back in March we chatted about the increased interest MostWantedDomains.com ... read more ...
 
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Castaways Bar, LLC Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking On Squaregrouper.com - Castaways Bar, LLC represented by Carl Spagnuolo of McHale Slavin, P.A., Florida, USA has just been found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) by a one member UDRP panel. Complainant operates a bar and restaurant in Jupiter, Florida under the name SQUARE GROUPER TIKI BAR Complainant claims to have trademark rights as early as January 26, 2003. Complainant says its “SQUARE GROUPER” establishment is well known and is “nearly a famous mark” since it was used as the location for the ... read more ...
 
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The Numbers Are In & Its Official The Holiday Shopping Season Belongs To The Internet - The holiday shopping numbers are in and its official, the Holiday shopping season now belongs to the Internet. Overall holiday sales numbers are down with retail brick and mortar stores licking their wounds, but online retailers are surging according to a report that just aired on Fox News. Amazon.com is reporting sales are up 44% from last year. eBay is reporting 32% increase in sales An IBM report says that overall, online sales up 18% from 2012 with total spending on Cyber Monday alone at $2.29 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Our 6,000th Post On Our 6th Birthday; It’s Been Quite The Ride - We didn’t actually plan to write our 6,000 post on what is the 6th birthday of TheDomains.com. Our first post was published on December 4th 2007. (yes I know its technically tomorrow) Time really does fly. For those keeping count in addition to the 6,000 posts, there have been over 81,000 approved and published comments and well over 5,000,000 visits. Our first story on the new gTLD’s wasn’t until June of 2008, in a post entitled “So are you Ready For Hundreds of New Domain Extensions?” There ... read more ...
Mon 2nd December 2013
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Has Google Made Domain Migration Harder ? - Patrick Altoft is the Director of Search at Branded3 and he wrote an article today about Google making it harder to migrate to a new domain. From the article: Changing domains has never been something to be taken lightly but in the past year, Google appears to have made it tougher for brands to carry out a legitimate re-brand, or domain change for other reasons, without suffering catastrophic SEO losses. We’ve been talking to a number of businesses that have changed domains and lost huge amounts ... read more ...
 
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EU,US and Hong Kong authorities work together to take down 690 tawdry websites - Time Magazine is reporting that European and U.S. authorities have cracked down on another group of websites that traffic in counterfeit goods. This continues to be an ongoing battle between authorities and the counterfeiters who have networks all throughout the world. From the article: “These websites were set up to dupe consumers into unknowingly buying counterfeit products,” Europol said in a statement. In the operation dubbed “In Our Sites,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took ... read more ...
 
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Hosting Company XBT.com Is The Buyer Of Servers.com For $300,000 - The buyer of the domain name Servers.com has issued a press release about its $300,000 acquisition of the domain. XBT, whose website is XBT.com “one of the largest dedicated hosting, IP Transit and co-location provider of the European Union” acquired the domain name servers.com for 300.000 US dollars “as a highest bid in an auction, which took place in Dallas.” “Through ROOT S.A., XBT has been dominating the European market and with an aggressive acquisitions strategy in US and Asia is ... read more ...
 
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Kim Dot Com’s Mega.co.nz Is Buyer of Mega.co Sold For $60K - Just over two weeks ago we reported that the domain name Mega.co was sold for $60,000 to JustCloud.com However today the domain name Mega.co is being forwarded to Kim Dot Com’s Mega.co.nz. cloud service. For Mega.com acquiring the domain name Mega.co makes a lot of sense not just as a URL shorterner, but I’m sure there was a good deal of typo traffic going to the .co domain name. The domain name was owned by Rocket Name™ According to Rocketname.com, it’s the fifth biggest .co sale to date ... read more ...
 
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12 Year aged 8×8.net Lost in UDRP; Panel Rejects Laches - 8×8, Inc. (“Complainant”), owner of the domain name 8×8.com just won a three member panel against 8×8 Mediacom Services Ltd  represented by Ari Goldberger of Esqwire.com, New Jersey, USA on the domain name 8×8.net which was registered back on August 8, 2001. Complainant states that it provides hosted business VOIP phone services and a wide variety of cloud-based communications services and that it has been using the 8X8 trade mark since at least as early as 1996 and that over the past ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Auctions Nov Domain Market Report led by Surpass.com - Go Daddy sells 39,077 domains in November vs 40,575 in October. It is interesting to note that October got adjusted up from 39,830. The top sale was surpass.com for $50,000. The domain was registered in 1997 and was purchased by BTL Group, its already developed into a website that helps universities in Europe with e-assessment. (Click to enlarge) ... read more ...
Sun 1st December 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
From An $11K Sale In 2004 Curious.com Sold Launched in May Gets $7.5 Million In Funding & Is Covered By Forbes - Curious.com was which  just been covered by Forbes.com,  as after launching in May and now having raised $7.5 Million, has a pretty Curious past of its own. On the business front Curious.com was cofounded by Justin Kitch, Chief Technology Officer Thai Bui, and engineering chief John Tokash. Kitch and Bui were cofounders and Tokash an early employee of the small-business website platform Homestead that Intuit bought in 2007. On the domain name front the domain was purchased for $11,000 back in 2004 ... read more ...
Fri 29th November 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
Here’s a Mainstream Publication That Gets The Value Of Domains: Hope.com, Alert.com, Usher.com, Wisdom.com. Mike.com, DNA.com; Alarm.com - bizjournals.com, covered what they considered to be very successful companies located in DC that own great domains in a post entitled  “The golden domain names of D.C. Tech” I quite an opposite approach to the Forbes article which portrayed those that acquired great domain names in the 1990′s as less than great businessman. The article covers MicroStrategy Inc. and its CEO Michael Saylor, which accumulated domain names like hope.com, alert.com, usher.com,  wisdom.com. Michael.com and mike.com ... read more ...
Thu 28th November 2013
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Troubling: UDRP Panel Hands Over Generic Domain RainForest.es - Rain Forest , SL of  Madrid, Spain just won the UDRP lottery and got the generic domain name RainForest.es The decision was handed down in Spanish and we used Google translate into English The panelist Albert Agustinoy Guilayn has some pretty disturbing language in this decision: The Respondent is the holder of many generic domain names , most of which are publicly offered for sale . Thus, the use of the domain name seems to fit into an obvious speculative behavior .  In this regard , the Respondent ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Panel Refuses To Let BuyDomains Give Up Domain & Issues Ruling Against It on Shiseido.net - A one member UDRP panel refused to allow BuyDomains.com to unilateral consent to transfer the Domain Name Shiseido.net to the Complainant, Shiseido Company of Tokyo, Japan, and went ahead and issued its opinion ordering the transfer of the domain. BuyDomains.com tried to agree to the consent to transfer while still maintaining that its did not register the domain name in bad faith. The panel took that ball and ran, saying due to that statement the panel had a duty to issue an opinion. Its a good ... read more ...
Wed 27th November 2013
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Richard P. Glass, Jr. Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking On Petfinity.com Registered in 1999 - Richard P. Glass, Jr., represented by Charles F. Meroni, Jr. of Meroni Meroni, P.C., Illinois, USA has just been found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name Petfinity.com The complainant based his claim on a trademark registered in 2013. The domain name was registered on September 24, 1999. “The panel noted that domain was registered by the domain holder on September 24, 1999, which was one month before the UDRP became effective. “Complainant was well aware that ... read more ...
 
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Maker of GRAND THEFT AUTO Loses UDRP On Gta.tv Panel Finds It Stands For “Great Toronto Area” - Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. the maker of Grand Theft Auto just lost a UDRP on the domain, gta.tv. The disputed domain name was registered on March 19, 2010. The Respondent also owns some domain names since 2009, particularly the following: DOMAIN NAME gtanews.com and gta411.com The Complainant argues the following that, since 1998, the Complainant has been using the trademarks GRAND THEFT AUTO and GTA extensively around the world on television, Internet, magazines and various media. That ... read more ...
 
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Google Sued For Trademark Infringement Over Its Hangout Service By Hanginout Damages & Retraining Order Requested - Hanginout, Inc. which describes itself as a San Diego based technology company filed suit against Google this morning over its “hangout” service for trademark infringement, federal unfair competition, and common law unfair competition. In addition to damages Hanginout is asking a judge to grant a temporary, preliminary and permanent restraining order against Google to prevent them from using their Hangout product and name. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern ... read more ...
 
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Escrow.com Responds To Customer Inquiries On Recent Departures From The Company - Brandon Abbey on Behalf of Escrow.com has issued a statement in response to the recent departures of Andee Hill 2 Other Employees,  which quit last Friday to go a newly formed competitor EscrowHill.com which was announced on Monday morning. Here is Mr. Abbey’s statement unedited (emphasis added): “Escrow.com appreciates the inquiries and support it has recently received from its valued customers and friends. ” ” The company takes the confidential nature of its business very seriously, and ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1 Million Led By 3dPrinter.net during $60K, Routes.com during $50K & Mozart.co At $21K - Over the past week, 650 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1m. This amounts to $60,. Million in year-to-date sales revenue. Over 49% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: ·         Top .coms: routes.com at 50,000 USD ·         Top ccTLD: mozart.co at 21,000 USD ·         Top “other” TLD: 3dprinter.net at 60,000 USD The most interesting sale of the week might be 87777.com which ... read more ...
Tue 26th November 2013
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.Luxury Selects Namejet.com/Afternic.com For Sunrise Landrush Auctions & Premium Name Sales - Luxury Partners, LLC, which own the new gTLD .LUXURY has selected NameJet and Afternic to manage the Sunrise, Landrush and Premium Name selection and sales. Godaddy.com which recently purchased Afternic.com, is currently taking pre-registrations of .Luxury domain names starting at $799.99 a year. Here is the rest of the press release: “The .LUXURY gTLD provides a brandable platform to meet the unique needs of the luxury market. Businesses in the luxury industry will have the opportunity to strengthen ... read more ...