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 14th July 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Enom.com Wins Rights to Enoms.com Just 15 years After it Was Registered - eNom.com won the rights to the domain name Enoms.com in a UDRP just 15 short years after the domain name was first registered and 8 years after the domain was registered by the current domain holder. By the way you got to love the name of the domain holder “Muhammad Enoms General delivery / ENoms.com has been registered just few days after Enom.com, therefore could not have been regstere” (“Respondent”), Indonesia The registrant actually ran out of room to put in the line for the Administrative ... read more ...
 
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You Can Buy .Love, But It's Going To Cost You Up To $15K Per Year, Per Domain - .Love which launches Thursday,  is the first offering of Merchant Law Group which applied for 8 new gTLD’s. Despite a report yesterday, the best domain names for the new gTLD .Love have huge premium registrations/renewal prices,  actually the highest we have seen other than some Rightside new gTLD domain names up to $15,000 a year. There are other top .Love domain names that are reserved and not available. One and two character domains are also not available at this time. The normal registration ... read more ...
Mon 13th July 2015
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Makers Of YPlan App Found Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Highjacking on 14 Year Old Yplan.com - YPlan, Inc. (“Complainant”), represented by Eugene Rome of Rome Associates, A.P.C., of California, was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name yplan.com by a one member UDRP panel of Antonina Pakharenko-Anderson Talk about a slam dunk case. The Complainant which says its the “creator of the well-known and famous application based or mobile app based service called YPLAN”, alleged its rights in the YPLAN mark date back to 2012 based on the registration ... read more ...
 
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HG.com, Here.com, TheOpening.com And More Domain Movers - Welcome to the always interesting and often “breaking news” series called Domain Movers exclusively here on TheDomains! I scour the web and watch what companies are buying and registering domain name wise and report to you what I see. I heavily rely on whois records, which doesn’t always speak the whole story but most of the time it is providing factual information as to what is happening with a domain name. Here are the latest domain name movers: Twitter Inc. registered the domain names TwitterAudiencePlatform.com ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Issues The Challenge: Giving Away $2K For The Best New .Com & .XYZ Domain Name - The .XYZ registry has issued The Challenge “Think you can register the best .COM or .XYZ domain name?” “Submit yours, along with a short survey, for your chance to win $1,000! “2 winners will be announced on August 10th and 2 more on September 7th” Here is how TheChallenge.xyz as explained on the .XYZ site: “.COM is suing me – Daniel Negari, CEO and Founder of .XYZ – in part over a video where I said it’s impossible to find the .COM domain that you want. “Reacting to my interview ... read more ...
 
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Monte Cahn Named As One Of Top 400 CEO's to Follow On Twitter - StrategicObjectives.com, published The Ultimate List of Social CEO’s on Twitter @SO_pr and my partner in RightoftheDot.com made the very impressive list of 400. If you check out the top 20 you can see its a very impressive list to make: 1. Oprah Winfrey @Oprah (24,518,272 followers) –CEO of OWN 2. Bill Gates @billgates (16,282,164 followers) – CEO of Bill Melinda Gates Foundation 3. Richard Branson @richardbranson (4,230,000 followers) – CEO of Virgin Group Bio: Tie-loathing adventurer and ... read more ...
 
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.News Sets Record With Of Over 400 Registrations on Day 5 of EAP; Now Over 1,000 - The new gTLD .News has set what WE believe is a record number of domain name registrations in Day 5 of AN Early Access Program (EAP) and now has over 1,000 registration. In the Early Access Program registrants pay an extra fee to register a domain name ahead of general availability (GA) where domain names become available to be registered on a first come, first served basis. On day 5 the whole price of the EAP fee is $100. This means that Rightside (NAME) just made over $40,000 in just EAP fees in ... read more ...
 
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A Brandable Name That Got Unlucky - The situation going on in Greece has been in the news for the last few years. Back in 2011 a new software company decided to name itself Grexit. With all the talk back and forth on whether or not Greece will leave the Eurozone, some have coined the phrase ‘Grexit” QZ.com reported that all the attention is screwing up the traffic analytics and Grexit is considering a rebrand. From the article: As millions clamor to the Web for news of a Grexit, many will mistakenly land on the website of Grexit—a ... read more ...
Sat 11th July 2015
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UDRP Filed To Gain Control Of KendallJenner.com and KylieJenner.com - Two Separate UDRP’s were filed yesterday for the domain names KendallJenner.com and KylieJenner.com. The complainants are listed as Kylie Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Inc. and Whalerock Celebrity Subscription LLC. Both KendallJenner.com and KylieJenner.com were registered on the same date October 18, 2007, however the registrants are not the same, although both domains are registered to someone in India. KylieJenner.com goes to a parked page full of links to Kylie and has an Alexa ranking of 1.7 million ... read more ...
 
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BLU.com Domain Suspended For Ownership Verification - The 3 letter domain name BLU.com is currently suspended pending ownership verification at the domain name registrar Network Solutions. The domain name’s status is clientTransferProhibited but that status alone wouldn’t indicate the domain name is suspended. Visiting Blu.com directly there is a message in the right-hand top corner stating: “If you are the owner of this domain name, click here to verify” According to current whois records, the domain name is owned by “Blue Chip Value Fund” ... read more ...
Fri 10th July 2015
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ilove.La Launches VipDomains.La - According to a press release we received today, iLove.LA announced today that its new site, VipDomains.LA According to the press release, the best available .LA domain names are now searchable on VipDomains.LA “Great names available including Yoga.LA, Selfies.LA, HealthInsurance.LA, HipHop.LA and Couture.LA Featured Names also include over 100 first and last names, dominant business categories, real estate and legal names and dictionary word names. Many options for Short Names (1-3 characters), ... read more ...
 
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Reliance Industries Of India To Move From Its .Com (RIL.com) To Its Own new gTLD .Jio - Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries (RIL) has decided to move away from “.com” to the new gTLD .JIO to be used across the Reliance empire. Reliance now uses the three-letter domain name RIL.com Affinity Names Inc, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (RIL), has applied for multiple gTLDs,  including the .Jio brand domain. According to the Indiatimes.com, the company plans to use up to 200 second-level domains for its different businesses and departments such as Retail.JIO, Petroleum.JIO, ... read more ...
 
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RethinkDinner.com, FBAN.com And More Domain Movers - Domain Movers detects recently acquired, registered and domain names simply on the move for one reason or another. These domain movements are almost all by large companies and often reveal a future brand, product, service, ad campaign, new business or more. If this is your first time to Domain Movers, you can click that link to view more stories in the series. Here we go with the latest domain movers: Chemtura Corporation has allowed the domain name BackyardEssentials.com to expire. The domain had ... read more ...
 
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Happy Birthday .Org Turns 30 Today: Happy30th.org Launches to Celebrate - Today marks 30 years since the first .org domain name, mitre.org, was registered. .Org now has over 10.5 million domain names registered making .org  the world’s third-most reg generic top-level domain. Public Interest Registry, The nonprofit operator of .Org,  launched happy30th.org, where users can explore notable .org websites through an interactive timeline and discover how these websites and organizations have changed throughout the past 30 years. Brian Cute, CEO of Public Interest Registry ... read more ...
 
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LL.com 2 Letter Domain Name Sell? - The two letter .com domain name LL.com has had a change in whois records from REFLEX PUBLISHING, INC. to a HANGZHOU MIDAIZI NETWORK CO., LTD. with a GoldenName.com email address. Reflex Publishing owns some great domain names like Baseball.com, Motels.com and many more and states not only in whois records its domain names are not for sale, it also states it on its website Reflex.com. Here is the whois record that updated this morning on LL.com: In January 2015 I had reported that Reflex Publishing ... read more ...
Thu 9th July 2015
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Did SX.com Go to High or Too Low during $555,050 ? - SX.com closed today on NameJet at $555,050, the winning bidder First outdueled Boothcom to win the auction. There were 11  bidders who each bid $500,000 or more for the domain. There has been some action lately in the LL.com world, We.com sold on Sedo as reported by Jamie Zoch. There was no price mentioned on We.com, but some research done by James Iles on Namepros put the name at $8 – $10 million based on the commission paid. The sales price of We.com has never been publicly revealed, but the ... read more ...
 
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.News Gets At Least 45 Registrations On Day 1 Of EAP At $10K+ - Looks like the new gTLD .News is going to be a big winner for Rightside (NAME). The 1st day of the Early Access Program is about to close at 1pm EST today where people could get first shot at registering domain names at a wholesale cost of $10,000 per (retail price varies by registrar, plus any premium registration cost, if any). As of the last zone file update we found 45 domain names that were registered yesterday July 8th, the 1st day of EAP. Interestedly almost all the domain name registered ... read more ...
 
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Verizon Telematics May Be Hum.com Buyers - On June 29, 2015 I had reported the domain name Hum.com had been acquired by a company going by the name of “1877 Holdings LLC” according to whois records. That same company filed an image mark and word mark. The word mark is for an OBD product / service  and bares the name of: Hum I have discovered a little bit more information and this has lead me to believe that Verizon Telematics may be the buyers of the Hum.com domain name and recently filed trademarks? Verizon acquired Hughes Telematics ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Golf 1,778; .Tours 1,693; .Plus 899; .Gold 768 - 4 new gTLD domain name extensions went into General Availability (GA) yesterday and including domain names registered by trademark holders in the Sunrise period and those who paid an extra fee to register domain names in the Early Access Program (EAP), here are the number of registrations for each after the first day of GA: .Golf 1,778 .Tours 1,693 .Plus 899 .Gold 768 I know some domain names got registered early in the EAP period including MyrtleBeach.Golf which I applied for in day two and got ... read more ...
 
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.Site Now In Early Access: Here Are Some Non-Premium & Low Premium Domain Names - .Site a new gTLD that is being launched by Radix and is in the Early Access Period (EAP) where for any extra fee you can register a .site domain ahead of General Availability (GA) which starts on July 15th at 16:00 UTC. If a domain is still available after the EAP it can be registered on a first come, first served basis. We asked Radix to provide a list of non-premium .Site domain names, that is domains that do not carry a premium registration and renewal fee  which can be ordered in EAP or in GA. Here ... read more ...
 
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The normal compensate per staff member during ICANN in 2014 was over $187,000 - Ion Mag did an article that broke down the money that ICANN is making and the kind of salaries being paid out. It is a pretty thorough look at what goes on over at ICANN. Average pay per staff over $187,000 stood out to me. From the article: ICANN’s 2014 tax return (IRS form 990) shows a net trading loss. The true picture is somewhat masked by ICANN’s new gTLD cash windfall. In 2013, ICANN turned over $230 million and spent over $120 million, and made a slight profit in 2014. Result: happiness. But ... read more ...
 
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Thesis.com Purchased For $100K By Parent Co. Of WordPress Saved In UDRP - In a very interesting UDRP, Chris Pearson who owns the WordPress Theme of Thesis, lost its bid to grab the domain name Thesis.com from the parent company that owns and operates WordPress, Automattic, Inc. According to the UDRP, Respondent and Complainant were both approached by a third-party about purchasing the domain name thesis.com and Automattic, Inc. was the high bidder, paying $100,000.00 for the domain name The three member UDRP panel of the Hon. Neil Anthony Brown, QC, Hon. Richard DiSalle, ... read more ...
Wed 8th July 2015
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Playa Games, Maker of Online SFGame Played By 40M: Found Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Playa Games GmbH which is the creator and operator of an online game called “Shakes Fidget” which it says is known as “SFGAME” was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on the domain name SFGame.com The decision was handed down by the one member UDRP panel of Alistair Payne. The UDRP was decided by the On-line ADR Center of the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC). The domain holder is CBS Interactive a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, which owns 250 domain names that include the term ... read more ...
 
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Qatar Airways Loses 2nd UDRP in a Month On 15 Year Old DiscoverQatar.com - Qatar Airways Q.C.S.C. of Doha, Qatar, just lost a second UDRP in a month, its attempt to grab the domain name DiscoverQatar.com Last month the state owned Airlines lost a UDRP on two other generic domain names, discoverqatar.org and qatartourism.org last month. The domain holder represented himself in the UDRP The sole panelist of Adam Taylor found dismissed the UDRP but failed to Find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking even though Qatar Airways told the panel it had a US trademark on the term but did ... read more ...
 
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14 Year Old GSUS.com (Jesus in Spanish) Saved In UDRP From TM Holder of G-SUS - G-Hold License B.V. just lost its bid to grab the domain name gsus.com which is owned by Vertical Axis, Inc in a UDRP. gsus.com issued phonetically and slang for Jesus in Spanish. Vertical Axis registered the domain name Respondent registered the disputed domain name on October 14, 2001. Vertical Axis was represented by ESQwire.com The three member panel of Petter Rindforth, The Honourable Neil Anthony Brown QC and Jonas Gulliksson found that the domain name that was registered in 2001 was not Registered ... read more ...