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 2nd April 2015
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You May Have To go To Auction To Get Your Brand.Sucks Domain - According to a press release we received toady by the registrar 101Domain.com, now that the .Sucks domain extension has launched they are pricing the “reserved” .sucks domains at $2,199 well below the $2,499 suggested retail price, however the PR makes it clear that you could wind up in an auction for a yourbrand.sucks domain. Here is the info from the PR: There are two distinct launch phases for the .SUCKS extension: TMCH Sunrise Phase, for those validated in the Trademark Clearinghouse Begins ... read more ...
 
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Another Category Killer Domain, Storage.com is Sold - According to a press release just out, B2 Interactive has purchased Storage.com, including the domain name, intellectual property, and any ongoing business operations from from Self Storage Co., a subsidiary of Extra Space Management, Inc. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “B² Interactive’s founders have a long history of providing online marketing services to the self storage industry, dating back to 1998 when co-founder Bill Hipsher built the first online directory for ... read more ...
 
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Sexodrome.xxx Saved in UDRP Despite Trademark: Panel Finds "Drome" is Generic - The Complainant Librairie des Artistes in Paris, France, just lost its bid to gain control over two adult domain names, sexodrome-europe.com and sexodrome.xxx. Disputed domain names and were registered on September 24, 2014. The Respondent is using the domain name to propose referencing links to other websites . The Respondent is using the domain name to run a sex shop online. First, the Applicant must establish that it has rights to trademarks or service that he holds. As the Applicant holds ... read more ...
 
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ND.com, Javelin.com, DashButton.com and More Domain Movers - Domain Movers is an exclusive series on TheDomains that features domain name acquisitions, domain registrations and simply domain movers in general by large companies. These are mainly all early finds and often relate to new brands, services and more by large companies. Here we go with the latest domain names I could dig up! Vobe.com has been acquired by a currently unknown entity. Whois information is currently incomplete. The domain appears to have changed ownership on 1/31/2015 according to whois ... read more ...
 
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Drug Maker Hoffmann-La Roche AG Wins 154 Domains in One UDRP - A WIPO UDRP panel has awarded drug maker F. Hoffmann-La Roche control of 154 domain names in a single UDRP The domain names were owned by dozens of registrants. The decision has not been published yet but you can see why the panel awarded the domain to the drug maker as all of thedomain contained names of drugs that are trademarked and manufactured and/or marketed by F. Hoffmann-La Roche. Earlier this year ebay.com won control of 1,152 domain names with a single UDRP. Here are the domains: ... read more ...
 
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Donuts’ selling descent tops list of most-read stories for Mar on WTR - Trevor Little wrote on World Trademark Review that Donuts marketing offensive was the most read story for March. From the article: The campaign is aimed at spreading the new gTLD gospel to small businesses in the US. While unlikely to be the turning point in terms of wider public awareness of new gTLDs, the campaign will do no harm in spreading the gTLD message and will be welcomed by registrars. We argued that it is also a development worth noting by brand owners. Elsewhere in the gTLD world, there ... read more ...
Wed 1st April 2015
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WallStreet.com Is Back For Sale With Wall-Street.com & 7 Trademark: Starting Bid: $30M - WallStreet.com is back for sale. According to a press release just out the domain name WallStreet.com, Wall-Street.com are being sold with 7 U.S. registered trademarks with bidding starting at $30 Million Dollars. Wall-Street.com is an active website not just a domain name. WallStreet.com was the first publicly reported domain name to sell for more than $1 Million dollars. Monte Cahn brokered the domain for $1.02 Million dollars 1999. The domain name resold for $1,030,000 in 2005. According to the ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Daniel Negari Appears To Have Acquired The New gTLD .Rent - It appears Daniel Negari of  .XYZ has acquired another new gTLD .Rent. It appears that .XYZ bought the new gTLD .Rent application that was originally filed by  DERRent, LLC which was owned by Dominion Enterprises The applicant for .Rent is still currently listed as DERRent, LLC, which won the extension in a two-way battle with Donuts who withdrew their application,  however Daniel Negari is now listed as the primary contact as well as Mr. Negari’s email address and physical address, so it would ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Is Up Over $6 a Share In Early Trading - Godaddy (GDDY) which went public today at $20 IPO price is trading as of publication at $26.30, up $6.30 Godaddy’s first trade was at $26.18 then slipped as low as $25.49 before bouncing to its inter-day high of $26.84. Over 10,500,000 shares of Godaddy were traded in less than the 1st hour of trading. Godaddy sold 22 Million shares at $20 a share so more than 50% of the amount of shares available to be traded have been traded already in the first hour.     ... read more ...
 
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After Shares Hit An All Time Low, CentralNic Issues an Update On Their gTLD's - After its shares hit an all time low yesterday, CentralNic Group plc (AIM:CNIC) issued an update on “CentralNic gTLDs” CentralNic is a back-end provider for new gTLD’s Shares rose today 1p to 24p. ” CentralNic is pleased to report that following successful completion of auction processes, the gTLDs .online, .site, .tech, .love, .forum, .fan, .rent, and .realty will be made available to customers around the world exclusively via the CentralNic platform. CentralNic also recently won the tender ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines Names Lou Andreozzi, former Chairman of Bloomberg Law CEO of .Law - Minds + Machines (LSE: MMX), the owner of the new .Law top-level domain, today announced the appointment of Lou Andreozzi, former Chairman of Bloomberg Law and CEO of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets, Martindale Hubbell and lawyers.com, as CEO of .Law. Carl Jaeckel, founder of Lawyer Central and CMO of Morgan Morgan will also join as COO and John Morgan, Founder of Morgan Morgan, renowned businessman, philanthropist and political power broker will serve as Chairman. Minds + Machines has ... read more ...
 
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.Club Tops 200K Domains Is Godaddy's #1 Selling New Domain Extension - In less than a year from its launch,  .CLUB has sold more than 200,000 domain names. .Club is still one of just a handful of new gTLD’s that are adding hundreds of registrations a day. According to a Press Release out today by the .Club registry, .CLUB is recognized globally as a meaningful, memorable word that expresses community and shared passion. .CLUB is the most popular new domain extension introduced thus far as part of the Internet’s recent namespace expansion. Those now using a web ... read more ...
 
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Are You Bullish or Bearish on Go Daddy Stock ? - With Go Daddy shares set to start trading today, are you going to buy stock or are you negative on the offering ? James Gellert from Rapid Ratings told CNN he is not high on the stock. ‘Elevated’ financial risk: Investors want to know: Will GoDaddy shares be off to the races like Patrick’s No. 10 car or will they crash and burn? “I would say the caution flag is up,” said James Gellert, CEO of Rapid Ratings, a firm that rates the financial health of public and private companies. Even though ... read more ...
Tue 31st March 2015
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National Association of Realtors® and Move, Inc. Reach Agreement Over Use Of New gTLD's Outside The US - The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) and Move, Inc. (Move) announced today that they reached agreement over the use of top level domains outside of the United States. Accordingly, the complaint filed by NAR with the Chancery Court in Delaware on November 10, 2014 seeking clarification on this matter has been dismissed. Move was acquired by News Corp for $950 Million Dollars and the acquisition was completed on November 14, 2014. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Nothing related ... read more ...
 
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Highest Reported .info Sale Since 2007; Car.info during $76K Leads Sedo's $1.3 Million Week - Over the past week, 669 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.3 Million dollars. 56% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .com: cyberobics.com at 22,500 USD · Top ccTLD: portfolio.me at 10,700 USD · Top “other” TLD: car.info at 76,000 USD According to Dnpric.es,  Car.info ranks as the 3rd highest reported .info sale of all time. Sex.info sold at a Sedo auction in August 2007. Travel.info sold for ... read more ...
 
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.Org Domains Rose 1.3% in 2014 - Public Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org domain, today released the results of its bi-annual domain name report “The Dashboard,” detailing the worldwide growth of .org in 2014. The report reveals that the number of .org domain names registered in 2014 rose 1.3 percent, bringing the total domains under management (DUM) to more than 10,500,000 worldwide. Other findings outlined in “The Dashboard” include: Registrations in international markets continue to experience ... read more ...
 
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.Club & .Bar Team Up To Exhibit during The Nightclub & Bar Show Being Held in Las Vegas - .CLUB   .BAR domain names are teaming up for the first time to offer the nightclub and bar industry the opportunity to get the perfect web address for their club or bar at the  Nightclub and Bar Show being held in Las Vegas March 31-April 1, 2015 .CLUB Domains, which owns and operates the #1 selling new generic top-level domain “.club” and Punto 2012, the domain company that operates “.BAR” will be in booth # 232 at the in . According to a press release we received today, the .club and ... read more ...
 
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Google Inc. Acquires YT.com Domain Name - Google Inc. has acquired the 2 letter .com domain name YT.com. The domain came out of Privacy Protection at Dynadot on 3/30/2015 and transferred into MarkMonitor revealing Google as the buyers. Based on what I can tell and whois history records, the transaction likely took place on 1/29/2015 when the domains registrant data changed from Cyber Trading Co. at Tucows and transferred to Dynadot under privacy. Was the domain name YT.com acquired for YouTube.com? That is what I am thinking it was for ... read more ...
 
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nTLDStats Reports Over 1.25 Million People Have Registered The 4.8 M New gTLD Domains - nTLDStats.com is reporting that the number of Unique Registrants of a new gTLD domain name is just over 1.25 Million registrants. The total number of new gTLD domain names registered are now over 4.8 Million. Some other interesting  numbers from ntldstats.com about the registrants of new gTLD’s: Frank Schilling North Sound Names has the largest number of new gTLD registration with over 183,000 registrations of as far as we can tell all in new gTLD extensions of Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry. Uniregistry ... read more ...
 
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Tidal.com, TastyBrands.com and More Domain Movers - Welcome to the latest round of domain name movers. The domain movers series digs to find domain names recently acquired, registered and moving for one reason or another by large companies around the web! These are often early indicators into new brands, services, acquisitions of other companies and much more. Here we go: BL.com has just been sold at Sedo! Finlead AG were the sellers and they actually recently acquired the domain about 5/3/2014 when the domain went into whois privacy at eNom. It came ... read more ...
 
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Motley Fool Ponders if Go Daddy is Cheap - Alex Dumortier on Motley Fool took a look at the Go Daddy IPO and honed in on the history of operating losses and whether or not the stock is cheap based on projections. From the article: We have a history of operating losses and may not be able to achieve profitability in the future. That is one of the prominent risk factors that greets prospective investors in GoDaddy’s most recent prospectus. On a GAAP [generally accepted accounting principles] basis, GoDaddy has lost $622 million cumulatively ... read more ...
Mon 30th March 2015
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10 Red Flags on a Go Daddy IPO according to Pando Daily - On the heels of the upcoming Go Daddy IPO, Pando Daily listed 10 red flags for those thinking about investing. Some in my opinion are valid and some are not. Asking the question in red flag #3 “And besides, how much longer are small businesses going to need Web sites in an era when most are engaging with customers on Facebook, Twitter or other mobile apps?” Small businesses need to control their content on their own site, anyone advising them to use a walled garden with holes in privacy and data ... read more ...
 
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Giovanni Laporta CEO of Yoyo.Email Loser of 37 UDRP/URS's Rants About Domains, TM & More - Giovanni Laporta the CEO Yoyo.Email has made an extensive post on UDRPSearch.com, venting his thoughts about the UDRP/URS process the panelist, the process, domain names, trademarks and his motivation behind YoYo mail and his defense of what he says is around 50 UDRP/URS cases. According to UDRPSearch, YoYo has been the subject of 39 UDRP/URS cases and lost all but 2. These comments were made by Mr. Laporta in response to one of those lost decisions on Mysql.email and a comment made by a Mr. Levy ... read more ...
 
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Daniel Negari Quoted in South China Morning Post on Upcoming Go Daddy IPO - The South China Morning Post did an article today on the upcoming Go Daddy IPO. In the article Daniel Negari from .XYZ is quoted on the public offering and gives some insight on .xyz, the market in China for domain names and said the he feels dot com has it a peak. From the article: “GoDaddy is as close as it comes to being a consumer recognised brand for domains,” Daniel Negari, CEO of domain company XYZ, told the South China Morning Post. Despite warning from some experts that the GoDaddy ... read more ...
Sun 29th March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Investing in Education Domains ? University of Phoenix has mislaid half the Students - For those domain investors out there that have a big chunk of education related domains, especially online education, the latest news out of University of Phoenix may be of interest. Enrollment is on the decline. Enrollment at America’s largest for-profit university was about 460,000 students five years ago. Now it’s 213,000. From CNN Money: What happened: Apollo’s fast fall is another sign of the decline in for-profit education. Last July, one of Apollo’s former competitors, Corinthian Colleges, ... read more ...