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.

Sun 27th October 2013
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Over 35 Two Letter .Co.Uk Hit The Auction Block during NameJet - Although its not a market I invest in, I found it interesting that over 35 two letter .co.uk domain names have hit the auction blog over at Namejet.com .co.uk domain names has been in the news as Nominet UK,  the company that operates the ccTLD has been consider plans to offer .Uk domain names thereby great diminishing the value of .co.uk domains. The domain names do have an undisclosed reserve price. The two letter .co.uk back order deadline starts on November 21st and goes over several days in ... read more ...
 
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Vertical Axis Gets Hit With UDRP On ParkRoyal.com (Again) Now Based on 8 Year Old Trademark - The domain name ParkRoyal.com owned by Vertical Axis, Inc. has just been hit with a UDRP for the second time. The complaint was filed by, Grupo Costamex, S.A. de C.V. (COSTAMEX) Operación y Supervisión de Hoteles, S.A. de C.V. (OPYSSA) who has a trademark on the term for Travel club services; travel agency services, filed in February 2005 There are several US Trademarks for this term, one filed on Alcoholic beverages, namely, whiskey Scotch whisky and Scotch whisky produced in Scotland. As Attorney ... read more ...
Fri 25th October 2013
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Community Objections to .Islam and .Halal Denied By ICC - Two separate ICC panels have denied the objections to the new gTLD’s .Islam and .Halal finding that although there “opposition to Respondent’s application to some extent, but such opposition is not substantial”. Although they were two separate opinions both shares a lot of the same finding and drew the same conclusions: Here are the relevant parts of the decision: The Expert observes that only the Objector has filed an objection against Respondent’s application. No other individual, organization ... read more ...
 
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NewDomains.org Conference Kicks Off On Sunday In Munich - The NewDomains.org Conference being held for the second year in Munich, jammed packed of seminars, speakers and social networking events. The show kicks off on Sunday with some networking events and dinner and then goes into full gear on Monday morning with two sessions running all day. Monte Cahn from RightoftheDot.com a company in which I’m a Director in will be speaking in the session about Marketing on Tuesday along with: Tobias Flaitz,  of Sedo Lutz Berneke, eBrand Services Godefroy Jordan, ... read more ...
 
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We Said It Over A Year Ago, The BC Tells ICANN Allowing Singular & Plural New gTLD’s Are A Bad Idea - In a letter sent to ICANN, the Chair, ICANN Business Constituency (BC) told ICANN what we at TheDomains.com said over a year ago, that allowing new gTLD’s of plural and singular of the same term is a bad idea. “As we move towards the launch of the first new gTLDs this year, the Business Constituency is extremely concerned about ICANN’s intention to delegate both singular and plural versions of the same string. “We believe that allowing singular and plural versions of the same TLD string will ... read more ...
 
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Losing Private New gTLD Auctions For .Lawyer & .Website Net Top Level Domain Holdings $4.8 Million - Top Level Domain Holdings (LON:TLDH) said  by losing the  private auctions for .website and .lawyer, which concluded on Oct. 23, it will add £2.97m ($4.81m) to its cash reserves. The 14 previous new gTLD private auctions held by ApplicantAuction.com, totaled $18.9 in winning bids or around $1.33 million per string. This week ApplicantAuction.com declined to furnish a total amount raised in the auction for 4 string auctioned, telling theDomains.com that they would not be furnishing a total this ... read more ...
Thu 24th October 2013
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Disturbing; 12 Year Old Canary.com Lost in UDRP - Here is the decision translated by Google Complainant Canary LLC ( hereinafter referred to as ” the complainant ” ) . , Represented by Gregori D. Mavronicolas, of Mavronicolas Mueller Dee LLP, 950 Third Ave, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10022 Respondent artificially Lin ZanSong ( hereinafter referred to as ” the Respondent ” ) . , RM 101 West, Block 10, District II, Dongpu, YueQing, ZheJiang CN 325600, CN Institutions and the disputed domain name registration The disputed domain name ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Reports: 125.9 Million .Com/.Net Domains Registered Up 5% From Last Year - VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), reported financial results for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2013 reporting revenue of $244 million up 9% from the same quarter in 2012. Verisign reported net income of $81 million and diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.53 for the third quarter of 2013, compared to net income of $78 million and diluted EPS of $0.47 in the same quarter in 2012. The operating margin was 54.5% for the third quarter of 2013 compared to 51.9% for the same quarter in 2012. Business ... read more ...
 
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1and1.com New gTLD’s Pre-Reservations Pass 3.5 Million & Top 30 New gTLD List Is Revealed -                       1and1.com new gTLD pre-registrations just topped the 3.5 million mark and for the first time the domain name registrar is showing the top 30 new gTLD’s with the most pre-registrations. 1and1.com had only been showing the top 20 new gTLD based on pre-registration volume. Here is the top 30 according to 1and1.com in alphabetical  order. Interestingly  only one Geographic new gTLD made the top 30 list, .NYC.  Also only four of the new gTLD’s of the top 30 have ... read more ...
 
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Snapnames/Dotster Domain Auction Ends In Two Hours - The Dotster domain name auction ends on Snapnames.com in just about two hours at 3:15PM EST and as of publication out of the 155 domain names up for auction only 14 have bids. Out of the 14 domain names with bids, only 4 have more than 1 bidder, and 5 of the top 6 with the highest bids the reserve price has not been reached. If you like any of the domains on the list there seems to be a good chance you might win the domain with 1 bid (assuming it hits reserve) Best of luck.   <![CDATA[]]>Domain ... read more ...
 
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Funny: Company Sends Out PR Announcing It Renewed Its Domain For 5 Years As a “Bold Move” - I saw this press release today and thought it was pretty funny: “Hmeet.com has renewed its domain name to 2018 as a bold move to let members know that the organization is here to stay to continue to provide the services on which thousands of them rely. ” ““Hmeet.com wants the world to know that we will continue our business and all people with a sexually transmitted disease are welcome to join our site. Current members on our site don’t need to worry about whether or not we will shut down ... read more ...
 
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Report: Demand Media Lays Off All 15 Members Of R & D Unit - Variety.com, is reporting that just days after Richard Rosenblatt resigned from Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) as its CEO and Chairman of the Board,  all 15 members of the research and development unit at the company were laid off, including chief innovation officer Byron Reese. Demand reps did not respond to repeated requests for comment to Variety.com “Reese was seen as the architect of Demand’s SEO approach, which has been widely derided as turning the company into a “content farm” that flooded ... read more ...
 
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MutualFunds.com; NL.com; QR.com All Hit Heritage’s Inaugural Domain Name Auction - The world’s third largest auction house Heritage Auctions is holding its  inaugural Domain Name Intellectual Property Auctionun on November 21st in New York and some great domain names are up for sale including MutualFunds.com; Animation.com, QR.com, NL.com and Bicycle.com Other highlights in the auction include, but are not limited to: Numismatics.com, Alexandria.com, Suit.com, Tie.com, Sociology.com, LuxuryBags.com; EqualRights.com and CurrencyExchange.com. This Auction will mark the first ... read more ...
 
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Google: Improving Ad Rank to Show More Relevant Ad Extensions & Formats - Google posted on its blog post,  “we’re announcing improvements in the AdWords auction that let us more consistently show more relevant ad extensions and formats.” Ad Rank improvements Our system for ordering ads on search results pages uses a calculation called Ad Rank. Previously, Ad Rank was calculated using your max CPC bid and your Quality Score. With this update, Ad Rank will also take into account a third component: the expected impact from your ad extensions and formats. In addition, ... read more ...
Wed 23rd October 2013
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On The Same Day He Is Inducted To The Domain Hall Of Fame, Jeff Gabriel’s Son Richard Is Born -                 Talk about having a great day. Jeff Gabriel of DomainNameSales.com was inducted into the Domain Hall Of Fame yesterday, October 22nd at the TRAFFIC domain conference, right after his wife Melissa gave birth to their son Richard in the Cayman Islands. Official time of birth was 8:37 am. King Richard weighted in at seven pounds,  11 ounces and is 22 inches long. Jeff is a great friend one of my favorite guys in the domain industry. As a fellow member of the Domain Hall Of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
TheDirectory.com Becomes The Lastest “The” Domain To Make THE News - TheDirectory.com, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: SEEK), today announced plans to launch a national media/advertising campaign on cable and satellite television outlets as well as digital properties and radio stations broadcasting to over 100 million viewers and listeners around the world in support of its flagship Local business directory TheDirectory.com Right on top of the DomainSherpa.com live panel from the TRAFFIC conference its an interesting announcement, as the panel at TRAFFIC spent a lot of time chatting ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Announces 1st New gTLD Added to a Root - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) from its New gTLD Program were delegated. This means they were introduced into the Internet’s Root Zone, the central authoritative database for the Internet’s Domain Name System. As a result, the domain name Registries, the organizations approved to operate these and other soon-to-be-delegated gTLDs, can execute the final processes required to make their domain ... read more ...
 
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BuyDomains Sells JHAH.com For $3,888 To The #1 World’s Oil Producer Saudi Arabian Oil Company - The domain name JHAH.com was sold by BuyDomains.com, in June on Afternic.com for 3,888 probably on a Buy It Now basis. Today the whois on the domain name updated and the buyer is the world’s #1 oil producer, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company. Saudi Arabian Oil Company according to  Hoovers.com, is “the king of oil, and the world’s #1 oil producer, supplying more than 10% of global oil demand. “In 2012 the company had oil reserves of 260 billion barrels (the world’s largest); it also owned 283 ... read more ...
 
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16 Year Old Domain RelianceGroup.com Saved In UDRP - Reliance Telecom Limited of Mumbai, just lost a UDRP on the domain name RelianceGroup.com which was registered on September 21, 1997. The domain holder did not respond to the UDRP but won any way. Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel: Reliance uses the domain name relianceadagroup.com for its main website but owns some 500 domain names with the word Reliance in the domain. The Complainant is an Indian corporation with its principal office in Mumbai, India. The Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Politico.com Covers .GOP Without Talking About .Republican - Politico.com just covered the .Gop new gTLD which is being run by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group that focuses on electing Republicans to state-level offices (RSLC) “At the RSLC, we do pride ourselves on trying to look a little further down the road and take a longer view of things,” Chairman Ed Gillespie said in an interview, citing work the committee already does to recruit local candidates who may rise into the ranks of the national party one day. “I think we’re well ... read more ...
 
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Afternic/Godaddy Sales Total $1,625,000 - GoDaddy and Afternic’s reportable weekly domain sales for the week of 10/14/13 – 10/20/13 attached. Total domain sales for the week summed to  $1,625,205. Here are the reportable sales for the week     <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Tue 22nd October 2013
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Escrow.com: We Close Domain Sales For More Money In a Week Than What Others Are Reporting For The Year - In the final session from the TRAFFIC Conference  some blockbuster statements which indicate a huge amount of big dollar domain sales have gone unreported and the total amount of domain sales are way under-reported. Andee Hill from Escrow.com had a pretty eye opening statement at the Meeting of the Chiefs. The Must-Attend T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Seminar, that the  total dollar volume of domain sales that get processed through Escrow.com,  greatly exceed the amount that gets reported saying; “we close ... read more ...
 
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The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress Returns To New York In Mar 2014 - Momentum events which held its 2nd Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress, just a few weeks ago in London, will again bring together the leaders of the brand and domain community this coming March in New York for two days of advanced learning and real-world launch case studies timed to coincide with the anticipated delegation and launch of the initial wave of new TLDs. The 3rd Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress which will focus on launch strategies for brands and generics as the first wave ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.6MM - Sedo just published it weekly transactions report Over the past week, 684 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.6MM. This amounts to $54,7m 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: igarden.com at 37,990 USD · Top ccTLD: schiffssuche.de at 17,780 EUR · Top “other” TLD: cloudit.net at 28,750 USD Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Sedo to Auction Rare & Never Before Released .Asia Domain Names Including 1 & 2 Letter/Number Domains - Sedo.com announced today a strategic partnership with DotAsia, the organization charged with running the .Asia top-level domain (TLD) and RightOfTheDot.com, a leading domain industry consultancy, to auction a series of rare and never-before-released domain names. Through these auctions, approximately 1,300 one and two character domain names such as 8.asia, 28.asia, and X.asia will be offered to the public for the first time. For more information on the pending auctions, visit sedo.com/us/asia. The ... read more ...