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.

Tue 22nd October 2013
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Verisign Vs ICANN Round 3 - In a letter sent to ICANN yesterday by Verisign’s Chuck Gomes,  Vice President, Policy of VeriSign, Inc. responded to the response he received from his initil letter to ICANN seeking to “set the record straight” As the previous two letters its worth a read: Dear Cyrus, I was disappointed by your October 3, 2013, response to my August 30 letter to Fadi. But before I tell you why, let me start by saying that I am not interested in starting an unending chain of correspondence. That said, I do ... read more ...
 
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PPA Media Services / Ryan G Foo Loses 3 Separate UDRP’s In One Day & His 56th Overall - PPA Media Services / Ryan G Foo lost three separate UDRP decisions with three separate complainants all handed down yesterday. In the 1st case brought by Sirius XM Radio Inc., the domain at issue as the typo Sriusxm.com amazingly it took the trademark holder 7 years to being the UDRP: “Complainant argues that Respondent registered the sriusxm.com domain name on July 29, 2008, one day after the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Inc” In the second case brought by fashion ... read more ...
 
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UDRP: FlowGuard.com Barred By Laches To Get 17 Year Old Domain Name Flow-Guard.com - CoorsTek, Inc. which owns the domain name FlowGuard.com lost its bid to grab the domain name flow-guard.com with the majority of the panel finding that the trademark holder waited to long and was barred by the doctrine of latches from making the complaint. FlowGuard.com was registered on March 24, 1998. Flow-Guard.com was registered on August 15th, 1996 The domain holder was represented by Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com. Complainant is the owner of trademark registrations for FLOWGUARD and FLOWGUARD ... read more ...
 
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First 4 New gTLD’s (ALL IDN’s) Cleared By ICANN To Go To Delegation - According to an announcement by ICANN, today, the first four domains from ICANN’s New Generic Top-Level Domains Program were cleared to proceed to delegation. These first new gTLDs, or strings, are: شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) – the Arabic word for “Web” or “Network” Registry : International Domain Registry Pty. Ltd. онлайн (xn--80asehdb) – Russian for “Online” Registry: Core Association сайт (xn--80aswg) – Russian for “Web site” Registry: Core Association 游戏 (xn--unup4y) ... read more ...
Mon 21st October 2013
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DrugMaker Loses UDRP On Domain Name Diet-Xenical.com - Drug manufacturer Hoffmann-La Roche just lost a UDRP on the domain name diet-xenical.com. Its a pretty amazing decision considering that Xenical is  a trademark term for a diet drug, the domain holder didn’t even response to the complaint and the domain resolves to a website that advertises Generic Xenical for sale. Here are the relevant findings from the one member panel: The disputed domain name is identical to the Complainant’s trademark except for the prefix “diet-“. It is well established, ... read more ...
 
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Starting Today, Twitter Allows You To Schedule Your Tweets For Publication Up to A Year In Advance - According to a blog post on Twtter.com, starting today, all marketers using Twitter’s Ad Products can schedule organic or Promoted Tweets for specific dates and times up to a year in advance. These can be coordinated to go live with new or existing Promoted Tweet campaigns to enable you to plan your real-time campaigns at your convenience. With scheduled Tweets, you can publish content at any time without having staff on-call to Tweet on evenings, weekends, holidays, or other inconvenient times. Advertisers ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Launches Site In Chinese: Sedo.cn - Sedo,  unveiled a new Chinese website today, according to  a press release we just received, “expanding its international reach to serve China’s 591 million Internet users and more than one billion Chinese speakers around the world”. “With the addition of a Chinese-language site, Sedo now offers a platform that powers domain related services and transactions in 7 languages, and support from a staff of domain professionals that speak 25 languages, further strengthening its position as the ... read more ...
Sun 20th October 2013
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Catching Up With SnapNames.com & The $380K of Sales we Tracked From 2013 - While Sedo, Afternic, Godaddy and NameJet.com all now self report its sales/auctions of domain names that sell through their platforms, one service that does not generally report the results of its auctions on any regular basis is SnapNames.com I figured I would pull the YTD report of the domain names I followed/backordered at SnapNames.com and report the selling prices. I don’t think a lot of these have been reported before. All sales took place in 2013 and includes all transactions I had on my ... read more ...
 
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Guest Post: Newcomer Stymied By ICANN and ICC’s Process -                   This is a guest post by Christopher R Barron, who is the Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of GOProud. “GOProud is a national organization of gay and straight Americans who seek to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights. We work on the federal level and state level to build strong coalitions of conservative and libertarian activists, organizations and policy makers to advance our shared values and beliefs.” The ... read more ...
Sat 19th October 2013
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Roy Messer Sells BigBreakfast.com To IAC/InterActiveCorp - Domain investor Roy Messer’s Nett Corp, which sold Vodka.com for $3 million dollars a few years back, just sold the domain name BigBreakfast.Com to a public company. If your thinking McDonalds or one of the restaurant groups bought the domain you would be wrong. The domain instead was bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp which owns many of the most popular web properties including Match.com, Ask.com and About.com. Of course Roy may have not know who was buying the domain since it appeared to be bought ... read more ...
Fri 18th October 2013
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Verisign Launches of DomainScope: Domain Discovery Tool To Find Available .Com. .Net & .Tv Domains - Verisign launched DomainScope.com today which they say “a new domain name discovery tool designed to enhance the search for unique, relevant domain name choices in the .com, .net, .tv and .cc top-level domains”, for which it is the registry for. “Incorporating the same functionality found in our DomainFinder, DomainScore and DomainCountdown tools, DomainScope replaces these tools and allows users to focus their domain search and uncover new domain name registration opportunities in one place.* “DomainScope ... read more ...
 
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Key-Systems Celebrates 15th Birthday -         In a press release we received today, Key-Systems is celebrating its 15 Birthday Key-Systems, which currently manages more than 3 million web addresses (domains) for more than 70,000 retail/corporate customers and 1,800 resellers worldwide, celebrates its 15th company anniversary in October. Since its foundation in 1998 the Key-Systems GmbH has emerged as one of the leading European companies for the distribution and management of domains and ranks among the 15 largest providers for ... read more ...
Thu 17th October 2013
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Up.Co Hits Times Square In A BIG Way -                     The .Co registry just published a pretty impressive picture of a billboard in Time Square right above the NASDAQ sign for Up.co “There’s nothing we love more than to see one of our .CO-ers succeed in a massive way. Well, except for one thing.  It’s even more exciting when their massive success will help hundreds of thousands of people around the world to succeed in a massive way too!” “Today we are so proud to see that our good friends at UP Global (UP.CO) ... read more ...
 
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Google Reports Paid Clicks Up 26%; Cost Per Click Down: Has $56 Billion In The Bank: Shares Up + 7% - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2013. The market loved the news sending Google shares up over 7% to an all time high in after hours trading of $957 a share, up $68. For the domain name industry the takeaways are that the number of  paid clicks are up again. Way up if you measure by the same quarter  of 2012 where paid clicks are up 26% If your just looking at last quarter paid click are up nicely at 8% higher. Down once again was ... read more ...
 
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Another Domain Sale We Never Heard About: Buyer Of Personal.com Gets $4.5 Million In Funding - According to the Term Sheet today “Personal, a Washington, D.C.-based digital vault and private network for people to store and manage important information and documents, has raised $4.5 million in new VC funding led by Bill Miller of Legg Mason.” The company owns the domain name Personal.com The domain was owned by Yahoo! in 2009 In 2010 it went under the control of Brand protection company MarkMonitor.com The domain sold in July/August of 2010 where it went into Sedo escrow where it stayed ... read more ...
 
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Apple Wins Control Of 11 Domains: Macbook7.com; Findmyipad.com; Jailbreakmyipad.com - A WIPO UDRP panel awarded Apple Computers 11 domain names. Some of the domains awarded today deal with products of Apple and some are just typos. Here is a list of the 11 domain names: apole.com findmyipad.com freeiphonesoft.com hackmyipod.com ipa-iphone.net iphonefc.com iphonelyrics.com ipodcleaner.com ipodtouch5.com jailbreakmyipad.com macbook7.com Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Buyer Beware: New Alt Root Domain Name Registration Service Launches Promise Any Domain Name For Free - In an apparent attempt to grab a market share with the new gTLD s coming out, “AnyExtension.com launched today according to a press release that promissing the users can “submit any domain name and extension that one wishes and that too for free.” “With the help of this service, one can use domain names like www.power.boat, www.used.machines, www.paris.france or www.amy.smith.” “The project took about two years by the Dutch founder and scientific philosopher Johannes Brugeman and it looked ... read more ...
 
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ICANN: Implementing a New gTLD Collision Occurrence Management Plan - On 7 October 2013 the ICANN Board’s New gTLD Program Committee approved resolutions directing staff to implement the New gTLD Collision Occurrence Management Plan (“The Plan”) Tonight ICANN released details on how it will be implementing the New gTLD Collision Occurrence Management Plan. For those Registries that have already signed a Registry Agreement the contract have been notified that there Agreement has  been updated to include the registry operator obligations called for in the Plan, ... read more ...
 
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OMG: .XYZ Hits Top 5 Pre-Registered New gTLD’s during 1and1.com -                       Tonight 1and1.com top 5 new gTLD pre-reservation list changed and amazingly .XYZ is now sitting at number 5 with over 45,000 pre-reservations. The top five are now pre-reserved domain names in the new gTLD’s are: .Web .Online .Shop .App .XYZ Total number of pre-reservations are now over 3.2 million. Wow   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Wed 16th October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
Report: Chase To Limit Cash WIthdrawals, Deposits & Prohibits Outgoing International Wire Transfers Nov 17th - So this is well beyond the domain industry and bordering on disastrous if true. Let me be clear that I’m not a customer of Chase and have no independent verification if any of this is true and lets hope its not. The Drudge Report has a link to this report on its front page as well but has such widespread impact I figured it would be better if you were aware than unaware. Infowars.com is reporting, that Chase Bank has notified some of its US Customers that Chase Bank is going to limit cash withdrawals ... read more ...
 
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What Is The Matching .Com Domain Of Twitter’s Stock Symbol Worth: TWTR.com - Now that Twitter has selected to go public on the New York Stock Exchange and has picked the stock symbol TWTR to be traded under, the questions becomes what is the value of TWTR.com What was the value of the domain name before the announcement and what is the value now?? The domain is for sale on Sedo.com with a Make Offer The domain is going to a landing page and the first link of the left of the page is for Twitter. Back in 2010 the domain name was owned by a  Tweeter OPCO, LLC  of  Canton ... read more ...
 
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Moniker.com Sends Out emails Promoting .Biz Registrations; You Have To See This One (If Your Over 18) - Moniker.com is sending out emails to customer promoting .Biz domain name registrations. Fair enough. The ad is promoting a 35% savings off the list price of $10.59 and selling registrations for  $6.79. Of course the extension .Biz is meant to represent “Business” so as we always talk about,  the words to the left of the dot, should be ones that matches the extension and this one is about business. So I was pretty surprised to get this email from Moniker.com suggesting the domain it suggested. I ... read more ...
 
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Sold For $2,500 On Afternic, FundAnything.com Co-Owner Is Trump & Offers $1M To to Break The Crowdfunding Record -   If your the guy who sold the domain name FundAnything.com on Afternic.com for $2,500  year ago in October 2012, you might not to read any further. The domain name FundAnything.com, is now the centerpiece of Co-owners Donald Trumps new “kicker starter like” funding project. According to a press release out today, “In less than three months, the billionaire’s FundAnything.com has become the fastest crowdfunding website to raise over $1 million for a single project. ” “Now Trump is ... read more ...
 
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SLY.com Gets $50,000 Bid At SnapNames.com & Yes It Hits Reserve - The domain name Sly.com is part of the SnapNames.com Premium End of Year Showcase Auction and has gotten a $50,000 bid The auction which just started yesterday has 29 days to go. The domain auction closes on November 14th 2013 at 3:15PM in accordance with Snapnames.com normal closing rules. The domain name Sly.com has a reserve range of $25,000-$50,000 so it has hit reserve and will sell. The domain name Pineapple.net has a bid of $7,060 and also has hit reserve. There are 148 domain names in the ... read more ...
 
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Unintended Consequences As Aus Registry Study Turns Into Story “Domain Names Fading Out of Fashion” - Yesterday Aus Registry release a study showing only 25% of all Australians own a domain name. Aus registry which  runs the .Au registry and also is the back end provider for many new gTLD’s commissioned the study of 10,000 Australians  and used the results to encourage Australians to pay more attension to the domain name spac. “What we as an industry need to focus on now is raising greater awareness and education about the benefits of domain name ownership, particularly for businesses,” ... read more ...