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 10th October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Sends Out 1st Community Priority Evaluation Invitations; .Immo & .Taxi - ICANN has invited eligible community applicants to elect Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) as a potential method to resolve string contention. Today, the first two invitations were sent via ICANN’s Customer Portal to STARTING DOT on its .IMMO application, and Taxi Pay GmbH application for .Taxi All invited applicants will have up to 21 calendar days to elect to proceed with CPE and evaluation will commence shortly thereafter. The evaluation results are expected to be available in two to three ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameJet.com Holding the 1st Ever .US Domain Name Auction - For the  very first time, NameJet is offering .US domains on our auction platform. “These exclusive domains are priced to sell at no or low reserves, between now and 10/24/2013.” advertisements.us bed.us bras.us clip.us connection.us desserts.us device.us disk.us easter.us employee.us equity.us fixed.us folders.us hearts.us humanresources.us increase.us key.us keyboard.us keys.us kings.us majors.us messages.us newsletters.us occupations.us pedicure.us pensionplans.us planners.us practice.us refund.us regards.us retirements.us shower.us skills.us spend.us stuff.us teen.us transfer.us vaccine.us wealthy.us Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Afilias .Info Domain Auction Ends On SnapNames Today & Total Bids Are Under $5K - The domain name auction of registry owned .Info domains closes on SnapNames.com in a few hours and as of time of publication bids for all 25 domain names in the auction  total less than $5,000. The auction closes at 3:15pm EST in according with SnapNames.com closing procedure. All the domains are lead by Immo.info at $1,001. Immo is the French word for Real Estate. There are application for the new gTLD .Immo. Shipping.info is domain name with the 2nd highest bid at $925 Horse.info us only at $475.  ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
After 12 Years & Over 70 UDRP’s Sony Finally Gets Around To Filing A UDRP On SonyStore.com - Sony has over 35  retail stores in the United States which sell just Sony Products and they are called Sony Stores. The official website for the stores is store.sony.com. So its pretty mind blowing to see that it took Sony over 12 years to file a UDRP on this direct match .com domain of its actual Brick and Mortar stores. The domain name was registered in 2001 and owned by a company in the Caymans until 2008 when it was purchased by someone in China. By the end of 2012 the domain was controlled ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Backs Off On Closed Generic Strings Including .Search So Does L’Oréal - It looks like Google has given up operating new gTLD generic stings as a close registry,  even for  .Search which at one point it wanted to operate as a Dotless Domain. According to an ICANN’s announcement tonight Google d/b/a Charleston Road Registry has backed off the close generic string application for: .MOVE; .MUSIC; .MAIL; .MAP; .STORE; .SHOP; .BABY; .SHOW; .BOOK; .GAME; .CPA; APP; CLOUD; SEARCH, .MOVIE L’Oréal which applied for top operates generics like .Beauty, .Skin; .Hair; .Salon; ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Brazilian Senate Formally Opposes Amazon’s Application For .Amazon - In a letter sent from the BRAZILIAN EMBASSY in Washington today to ICANN, the Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Defense of the Brazilian Senate formally opposed the application of Amazon to the new gTLD .Amazon I would love to know the number of domain holders, brand holders and Internet based company that are located in the Amazon forest in Brazil. I can’t image that the Amazon region is a hot bed of active internet businesses, but it appears Brazil is going to hold Amazon’s feet to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CEO Of ICANN Seems To Have Thrown Himself Into a Snowden/NSA Mess With Brazil - According to Mercopress.com, Bhe President of Brazil,  Dilma Rousseff announced today that Brazil will  host a global summit on Internet governance in April 2014 The announcement was made after conferring the CEO of ICANN Fadi Chehade. “We have decided that Brazil will host in April 2014 an international summit of governments, industry, civil society and academia” to discuss Brazil’s suggestions for upgrading Internet security, Rousseff said on Twitter”. The summit will take place in Rio ... read more ...
Wed 9th October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
Internet Advertising Blows Past $20 Billion In 1st Half Of 2013; Up 18%; Check Out This Crazy Chart Starting From 1996 - According to  the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Internet advertising revenue surged past $20 billion for an all time record in the first half of this year. Leading the way was an “explosion in mobile ads shown by companies including Facebook and Google”. Online ad revenue of $20.1 billion in the first half represents an increase of 18% over last year’s first-half ad revenues of $17 billion. Mobile ad revenue soared 145% to $3 billion in the first half of 2013 representing triple-digit growth ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
In A UDRP With Wide Implications In New gTLD’s Domains, Panel Awards Tes.co to Tesco - In a very interesting case having implication for the new gTLD’s domain names,  Tesco Stores Limited of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, UK was just awarded the domain name Tes.co on the basis of having a trademark on the term Tesco. The panel combined the left and right of the dot in the domain name to come to the conclusion that the trademark owner of Tesco was entitled to the domain. Tesco owns the domain names Tesco.com and Tesco.co.uk. Of course this type of analysis had wide implication for new ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verisign: Over 150 Domains Registered Over Government ShutDown - Verisign the registry for the .com and .net registry just released a graph showing a lot of activity with people registering domain names involving the Government Shutdown.  It appears from the graph there have been over 150 domain names registered since October 1st containing the word :”shutdown” We also wrote a post about the domain name GovernmentShutdown.com on October 1st, so we are going to take partial credit for the volume of registrations since that date. Using our DomainView-Grapher ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Scott Day Gets Hit With UDRP On 16 Year Old GoldCoast.com By Owners Of VisitGoldCoast.com - This is certainly a UDRP that will be put up on the HallofShame.com watch list. It appears the Mr. Day has owned this domain since 1997 or 16 years. Gold Coast is a common Geographical term referring to all these areas according to Wikipedia.org: Asia Hong Kong Gold Coast, Castle Peak Bay, Tuen Mun district, Hong Kong Australia Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia Gold Coast City, local government area spanning the Gold Coast and surrounding areas Gold Coast Parklands Gold Coast Regional Botanic Gardens Europe Côte-d’Or, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Key Systems Publishes Graph Showing Time Line For Each New gTLD Roll Out - Key-Systems GmbH which operates domain name registrars,  domaindiscount24.com, rrpproxy.net,  and brand protection company, BrandShelter.com released a graph today on new the date that each new gTLD is expected to launch. Of course with each new gTLD there will be a Sunrise period for Trademark holders followed in most cases by a Land Rush period then the Go Live date where domain names can be registered. For each new gTLD string Key Systems estimates the Estimated Start of Sunrise Period Estimated ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Dot Latin, LLC Lays Out Its Plans For .Uno - Dot Latin LLC which announced on Wednesday, September 11, that it had formally entered into an agreement with ICANN to operate the .UNO, the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) .Uno today issued a press release to lay out its plans for the extension. “.UNO will be the first new gTLD to launch that will globally connect and unite Hispanic and Latino communities, businesses, individuals and consumers in support of a bicultural and bilingual Internet,” states Shaul Jolles, CEO of Dot Latin. “.UNO ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Jennifer Wolfe On How Brands Could Use Their New gTLD’s -                     In a post on Clickz.com, Jennifer Wolfe is founder and president of Wolfe Domain, a gTLD digital brand strategy advisory firm providing comprehensive guidance to global brands, interactive agencies, domain registrars, and legal counsel representatives on establishing a holistic gTLD name-anchored brand strategy for the next generation of the Internet, chats about how Brands might use their new gTLD’s to engage with their customers. While recognizing the most of these ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Media Options Gets MO.co Domain From .Co Regsitry - Domain brokr MediaOptions.com announced tonight on its Facebook page that is acquired the domain name MO.co from the .Co registry. A press release is expected to be released sometime today, but as of now we don’t know what MediaOptions.com paid for Mo.Co and how MediaOptions is planimg on using the premium two letter .Co domain. According to Andrew Rosener post on Facebook: “Press Release to come out soon but I wanted to announce that Media Options has acquired the MO.CO domain name from the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Shuts Down Pacman Registrar From New Registrations and Transfers Until At Least Jan 30, 2014 - In a letter sent to Pacnames Ltd. of  Auckland New Zealand ICAN has sent a NOTICE OF BREACH OF REGISTRAR ACCREDITATION AGREEMENT AND NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF REGISTRAR’S ABILITY TO CREATE NEW REGISTERED NAMES OR INITIATE INBOUND TRANSFERS OF REGISTERED NAMES The current breach is the third breach for Pacnames within a twelve-month period. Accordingly, Pacnames’ ability to create new Registered Names or initiate inbound transfers of Registered Names is suspended for 90 days pursuant to Section ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New gTLD Program Committee On Collision Report: Registries Can Launch If They Block A Lot Of Domains/Calls For More Study/.CORP & .HOME Are Doomed - The New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) made its recommendations tonight to the ICANN Board on the Collision report and its pretty messy. In short the NGPC recommends additional  study of the issue without a stated time frame, but with the exception of .Corp and .Home which seem to be indefinitely delaye, gives all other registries the option to proceed to delegation prior to receiving its SLD collision occurrence assessment report, if the registry operator initially blocks all SLDs that appear in ... read more ...
Tue 8th October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $970K - Sedo just published it weekly transactions report Over the past week, 615 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $970,000. This amounts to $52.1 Million in year-to-date sales revenue. Over 44% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: ·         Top .coms: chriskay.com at 22,000 EUR ·         Top ccTLD: cbs.de at 22,015 EUR ·         Top “other” TLD: epargne.net at 4,500 EUR   Here are ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DomainNameSales Sells $1.5 Million In Domains In Sept Led By DataCenter.com For $190K; Waitress.com $168K - In the first of what appears will be a regular monthly report, DomainNameSales.com reported over $1.5 Million in domain name sales for the month of September 2013, led by DataCenters.com at $190,000 and Waitress.com at $168K Here are all the sale we received and I assume there are more that were under NDA:   <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SilkApp.com Changes To Silk.co Gets Another $1.6 Million In Funding & TechCrunch Covers It - TechCrunch.com has just covered  the company previously known as Silkapp.com which has just rebranded to Silk.Co and that it raised an additional $1.6 Million in funding to bring it up to a total of $3.7 million in funding According to TC: “Since Silk first came out of stealth mode in 2011, there have been 300,000 interactive pages created on its cloud-based, web data-crunching platform designed for non-technical “knowledge workers.” Taking less easy-to-read data sets and making them more ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Fairwinds Partners Rolls Out BeyondTheDot.com To Cover New gTLD’s - FairwindsPartners.com which is a brand consultancy firm and also represented many Brand new gTLD applications, rolled out today a site  to “let consumers know what to expect” from the launch of the new gTLD’s “Beyondthedot.com is designed to help prepare Internet users for the new web addresses coming at them – because it’s likely to be surprising and confusing” The site says: “LOOKING TO LEARN MORE ABOUT NEW GTLDS? YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE Fairwinds Partners  has had a pretty ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
La Salle U Allows The Direct Match Domain To Be CyberSquatted On for Over 13 Years & It Sells Email Addresses Too - La Salle University won control of it’s direct match .com domain name today LasalleUniversity.com in a one member UDRP ruling. The fact that La Salle, won control of this domain isn’t the story. The story is it took La Salle over 13 years to even file the UDRP against a domain holder who was not only parking the domain name with results going to other educational links but even sold email addresses to third parties using the domain name. The domain was registered in July 2000. The UDRP was filed ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Microsoft Wins Control Of 13 Bing Domain Names In UDRP: BingFrance.com, BingSpain.com; BingFace.com - Microsoft just won control over 13 domain names infringing on its Bing Trademark. Some of the domains like BingFrance.com, BingSpain.com and BingBrazil.com are easy to see why the company would want the domains. Some others like Bing119.com and BingFace.com are a bit stranger. One domain BingBaidu.com was a double threat infringing on the trademarks of two companies which I assume either would have been entitled to.   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Cruises.com.au Sells For $102,000 To Company With Over $50 Million In Sales - According to a press release out this morning the Domain name  Cruises.com.au, sold for $110,000 AUD (approx. $102,000 USD) in an all cash deal. The domain was brokered by , Dtrade. The domain name was purchased by Ozcruising Pty Ltd which according to the press release is ” Australia’s number one online cruise agency with sales exceeding fifty million dollars annually.” Another nice domain sale once again proving that the cheapest acquisition of a valuable asset a company will ever make is ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
As The WikiLeaks Movie Gets Set To Open 2 Domainers, Schilling & Howe Get Ready To Cash In - As the movie about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange entitled The Fifth Estate, whose URL is TheFifthEstateMovie.com, is getting ready to open 0n October 18, two well known domainers are primed to make some money off the movie which is already getting a lot of buzz. Frank Schilling’s Name Administration owns the domain name FifthEstate.com while my Domain Sherpa weekly domain investor co-star Page Howe owns the domain TheFifthEstate.com The term Fifth Estate is known to be a generic term that relates ... read more ...