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 13th September 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Microsoft Registers Oct Event Domain Names, Confirming The Rumored Event? - It has been rumored  by many tech sites starting around Aug 20, 2015 that Microsoft Corporation is planning a big event in October 2015 but no confirmation on that event until, well, Microsoft registered the domain names: MicrosoftOctober2015Event.com | .net  October2015Event.com | .net I would say that should confirm it, unless they just like spending money on domain names for fun that will have little to no meaning after the month of October 2015? According to TheVerge.com, “the software ... read more ...
Sat 12th September 2015
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A inventory we only have to read, a comedy side of Domaining - Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up, if you have a little time, need some comedy in your life, I invite you to go check out this thread on Flippa. We get some wild pitches and stories in the domain business, this one is at the top of the list for 2015. The seller is saying he already rejected a $25,000 offer on 3 day old domain  in cash or 10,000 Bitcoins (BTC) which would equate to over $2.5 million. The seller says he would prefer $25,000 in cash than the 10,000 Bitcoins however as BTC seems ... read more ...
 
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Will .Film Prevent Squatting from Unofficial Third Parties ? - Will .film help in the battle against cybersquatting ? ScreenDaily.com published an article on the  Melbourne-based Motion Picture Domain Registry (MPDR) and their launch of .film, an extension dedicated exclusively to film content. From the article: The producers of Toronto selections February and Septembers Of Shiraz have already registered their official site with the suffix as the product is marketed to the industry as a potential anti-piracy device. Both hail from Nu Image / Millennium Films ... read more ...
 
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Apple Sued For Trademark Infringement Over "Ear Pods" - Plaintiff Direct Sound was started in November 2000 in Saint Louis, Missouri. Direct Sound is engaged in this business of manufacturing and selling audio headphones and related parts and accessories. Direct Sound owns the trademarks of “E.A.R.PODS” and “e.a.r.Pods.” Direct Sound uses the marks “E.A.R.PODS” and “e.a.r.Pods” on and in connection with its products. On September 8, 2012, Direct Sound filed Application Serial No. 85/724,049 (“‘049 Application”) seeking to federally ... read more ...
Fri 11th September 2015
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Veo.com Purchased By TD Ameritrade For $36K on NameJet.com Auction - Three letter domain name Veo.com has been acquired by TD Ameritrade, a domain name that was recently owned by New Ventures Services Corp according to whois records, prior to it selling for $36,100 on Namejet.com A company by the name of Veo International owned the domain name dating back to 2005 according to whois records and the past owner allegedly claims that he had his account “frozen from 2008 when i try to renewal i can’t, they tell me for reason security i do not know why, i try more time ... read more ...
 
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HIGH Movements Of 2 Letter .com Domains, Including FF.com And More Sold? - There have been A LOT of movements on 2 letter .com domain names the past two days starting on September 10, 2015 and continues into today, September 11, 2015, so I wanted to make you aware of the movements as some may be sold. The majority of movements detected include a “status” update in whois records, and this can indicate a domain name may have been “unlocked” for transfer and this can be an early indicator to a potential sale. FF.com, a domain name owned by Bank Of America has had a ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Wins 5 Year Case Against The Oscars (Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) - According to Variety.com, A federal judge ruled that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts Sciences (AMPAS) which owns and broadcast the The Oscars award failed to show that GoDaddy (GDDY) acted in “bad faith” with an intent to profit off of the Academy trademarks. U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr., in a 128-page opinion found that GoDaddy met its affirmative good faith safe harbor defense typically granted to registrars for domain name registered to customers According to Variety “The Academy ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Wins Court Case Most Thought They would lose - We have been tracking the battle between the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a few years now. It was looking like Go Daddy was going to lose a case that could set a precedent for other ip holders. The Hollywood Reporter published an article tonight in which they deemed it a “surprising court loss” for the Academy. This battle has been going on for five years. From the article: In a cybersquatting case that lasted more than five years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and ... read more ...
Thu 10th September 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Namepros Live Auction is behind for a initial time in years and it's for a good cause - Namepros will be conducting a live auction this upcoming Monday to help fellow domain investor Rami Steitieh and his efforts to get the necessary treatment for his wife who is battling for her life. Rami has a fundraising page here which details everything he and his wife are dealing with. So far just over $3,100 has been raised. In addition to the live auction, a series of threaded auctions will be ongoing for names that probably won’t garner as much action in the rapid fire setting of a live ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Gets At Least 20 Two Letter Domain Registrations On Day 1 Of EAP For adult To $12,500 Each - Donuts released over 200,000 two character domain names across all of its extensions in its Early Access Program (EAP) and we counted at least 20 registrations, on Day 1 although we are sure there are more. The domains that were registered on day 1 ranged IMHO to great domains well with the money to domains I wouldn’t have registered in General Availability. The wholesale cost for a EAP day 1 domain name registration is $10,000.  The retail price varies by domain name registrar but seems to be ... read more ...
Wed 9th September 2015
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Over 200 LLLL.com Low Priced Domains Are in a 4.CN/ROTD Auction Closing Tomorrow - The RightoftheDot.com/4.CN auction starts to close tomorrow morning Thursday September 10, at 8AM EST or 8PM Hong Kong time, over a staggered 4 hour time period with around 115 domain name closing each hour. We have looked at some great LL.com, NN.com, LLL.com, NNN.com domain names which has bids into the five, six and even seven figures and the 6 million in bids placed in domain names at auction but there are also over 200 LLLL.com domain names that have a reserve price of no more than $1,500 and ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: TDAI.com, Jibo.com, E3.com & More Domains - Welcome to another action packed Domain Movers where we detect recent movement on domain names that have been mainly all acquired by large corporations, some new startups and simply valuable domain names on the move for different reasons. These are often early detection’s that will result in new advertising campaigns, products, services and much more. Here we go: Freedman Electronics PTY LTD which acquired the domain name Rode.com from Tucows back in January 2015 as I reported here, has officially ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1.1million led by SGJ.com during $31,500 - Over the past week, 647 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.1m. 56% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.    Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: sgj.com at 31,500 USD Top ccTLD:  jj.de at 7,521 USD Top “other” TLD: 238.net at 9,130 USD New Gtld sales for the week: paul.xyz    1999    USD hallo.taxi    1150    EUR money.solutions    1000    USD A couple of repeating themes from last week, aa1122.com sold for 2,495 ... read more ...
Tue 8th September 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Namejet Publishes Almost $400K In Domain Sales In August -

Namejet.com released a reportable sales for Aug totaling $393,859.

Only those domain names that sole and were paid for by a finish of Aug 2015 are enclosed as good as usually domain name that sole for $2,000 or more.

Here are a domains and a sales prices for August:

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Verisign: Trump & Alphabet Both Make tip 10 Trending Keywords in .Com & .Net In August - The words Bank, Local, Experts, Trump, Scope. Alphabet, Fantasy, Tomorrow, Method and Teeth were the top trending keywords registered in .Com in August according to Verisign the registry for the .com and .net extensions. Alphabet is related to Google’s naming of its parent company and Trump I think you can figure that one out for yourself. Trump and Alphabet where the only two trending keywords to make the top 10 of .com and .net Before anyone goes and registers a bunch of Trump domains you might ... read more ...
 
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ipaymentinc.com Found Guilt Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on A domain it used to possess iPayments.com - In what is a great case for al domain name holders iPayment, Inc. of Westlake Village, California, represented by Waller Lansden Dortch Davis, LLP, just got found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name ipayments.com The company who brought the complaint used to own the domain name and let the registration lapse which the three member panel found to be “inexcusable”: “The Complainant did previously register the disputed domain name, and was not prevented from doing ... read more ...
 
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Down The Stretch We Come as a ROTD/4.cn Action Has Over $6M In Bids & Closes Wed @ 8AM EST - The RightoftheDot.com auction which is being held on 4.CN as part of the DOMAINfest.asia conference has 331 domain names have bids as of publication, including many with no reserves. You can see all the domain names in the auction here In all there are are 545 domain names in auction meaning that well over 60% have a bid. The auction starts to close over a four hour staggered period on September 10th at 8pm Hong Kong time,  which is September 10th,  8am EST, which we previous reported incorrectly. As ... read more ...
 
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CSC Sep New gTLD Report: .News & .Sexy Are Hot - The brand protection and domain name registrar CSC published its New gTLD Utilization Report for September late last week and had some interesting findings. We picked through the report and found what we believe are the highlights. You can review the entire report here. CSC publishes a New gTLD report every two months, and it’s “designed to update digital marketers and their peers in legal and IT about how new gTLDs are being adopted,we examine how .brand domains are being used and how effectively ... read more ...
Sun 6th September 2015
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Breaking: Rick Schwartz Sells a NNN.com Domain Putting Him 2nd on The YTD Sales Chart - Rick Schwartz wrote to me today to tell me he sold an NNN.com domain name for an amount which will  land him as the 2nd highest reported sale of 2015 per DnJournal. The transaction is still in  Escrow,  so the Domain King will not reveal what the domain is or what the purchase price was until the escrow transaction is closed. Rick,  like RightoftheDot.com/4.CN auction is using 4.Cn escrow’s service to handle the transaction. Mr. Schwartz already has the highest domain sale of the year with ... read more ...
 
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Tuft & Needle Mattress Startup Buy Premium Domain Name TN.com - On the morning of September 4, 2015 I had a pretty good hunch that the premium 2 letter domain name TN.com likely sold and now we have confirmation that it did and to who! TN.com is now redirecting to TuftAndNeedle.com, which is a startup founded in 2013 that offers mattresses that are delivered to your door in a box. They are the buyers of the domain name TN.com. Tuft And Needle has the highest rated mattress on Amazon.com and prices start from $600 for a queen and $750 for a California King, delivered ... read more ...
 
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Unlock.me with a $20,000 Bid On Go Daddy Auctions - The public auction closes today for Unlock.me, the name received a $20,000 bid and is closing on Sunday. The domain was registered back in 2008 and is owned by the owner of DNPric.ES and BrandsAndJingles.com. The domain does have a website up which lets visitors know the domain is available for sale or lease, there is a link to the auction. This would not be the first time for Brands and Jingles to land a 5 figure .me sale, they sold Fine.me for $10,000 back in April. A succesful close at $20,000 ... read more ...
Sat 5th September 2015
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Google Registers Alphabet.Sex in Sunrise: How Did They Do That? + More Generic's Reg As TM - Google has added another domain name to its growing Alphabet brand, this time Alphabet.sex which got registered yesterday. But Google registering another Alphabet domain name is not the story. The issue is how did Google get that domain name registered in Sunrise when to register a domain name in any new gTLD Sunrise period the registrant has to have a registered trademark for the term and then apply to the Trademark Clearinghouse before being able to register a new gTLD domain in the Sunrise period. I ... read more ...
Fri 4th September 2015
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Star Wars First Assault Game Back In The Works? Domain Reg Hints At It - *See update at bottom of page, which announces beta release of First Assault by Nexon. FirstAssaultGame.com has been registered by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client using generic whois data currently. Does this mean that the Star Wars game, First Assault may be back in the works? Doing some research, here are some findings: According to StarWars.Wikia.com : “Star Wars: First Assault was a video game in development at LucasArts. It was canceled due to the closure of LucasArts after ... read more ...
 
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.Club Publishes Aug Domain Results, Over $1 Million Cumulative Sales - The .club registry has published its registry reserved premium name SnapNames sales report for the month of August 2015 and it has now passed the $1 Million dollar mark in cumulative registry reserved premium domain name sales! The release states: As of August 31, 2015, total cumulative sales of registry reserved premium .CLUB names came to $1,099,780.20.  The highest single sale remains Wine.club at $140,000.00.  We introduced our tiered premium names to the registrar channel on July 1, 2015 ... read more ...
 
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This Weeks New gTLD Totals: Amsterdam 12,681; .FYI 1,159; .MBA 701; .Fans 653 - 4 new gTLD extensions launched this week into General Availability (GA) where the could be registered into a 1st come, 1st served basis. Including domain names registered in Sunrise by trademark holders and before GA (.Fans did not have a landrush or an Early Access Program) here are the total number of domain registrations according to ntldstats.com as of the last zone update: .Amsterdam 12,681 .FYI 1,159 .MBA 701 .Fans 653 .Fans as I said above did not have a landrush or an Early Access Period ... read more ...