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.

Sat 14th February 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Minnesota Appellate Court Rules Domain Names Are Property - Cincinnati.com published an article on a Minnesota court case that declared domain names are property and subject to garnishment. (TIP of the Cap to George Kirikos who tweeted out the story) Back in December of 2013 John Berryhill left a comment that I felt was good enough to be its own post, John spoke of why domain investors really don’t want domain names to be property. From the article: A Minnesota Appellate Court recently weighed in on an emerging question in the online world – is a domain ... read more ...
 
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin To Sell $4.4Billion Worth of Google Shares - Business Insider published a piece tonight that Larry Page and Sergey Brin are going to be selling $4.4billion worth of their holdings in Google. This was supposedly in place as part of a liquidation plan that expired in January. In 2014 Google did participate with the overall upswing to the market as the shares were lower by $32.24 or 5.8%. After the stock sales they will still control 52% of the voting power. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-co-founders-are-going-to-sell-44-billion-worth-of-shares-2015-2#ixzz3Rh7W7A3B ... read more ...
Fri 13th February 2015
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Sedo Publishes Its Biggest Public Sales Of 2014 - Sedo just sent out an press release announcing its Top 10 Highest Domain Name Sales in 2014 that were not under privacy Leading the list is mm.com, which closed at $1.2 million True.com was the second highest sale at $350,000. On the ccTLDs front kaffee.de (“coffee” in German) led the way selling for €100,000 which was just €1 short of the 2nd 3rd highest selling ccTLD’s chat.fr and musik.de (“music” in German). which both sold for €99.999 These were the highest public domain ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines Pockets $3.5+ Million By Losing .Blog & .Store: Now Has $48 Million In a Bank - Minds + Machines (LON:MMX) announced today that it added £2.3 Million, which is over $3.5 Million In USD, by withdrawing its applications for .Blog and .Store to settle those new gTLD’s in private auctions Minds + Machines’ cash holdings have risen to US $48 Million (£31.9mln). Minds + Machines also announced they won the new gTLD .DDS in a private auction with Google, although they didn’t say how much they paid for that extension DDS is an acronym of Doctor of Dental Surgery and “M + M ... read more ...
 
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Danica Patrick Not Happy That Go Daddy Ad Got Pulled - Webpronews ran a story on Danica Patrick talked about being upset that her Super Bowl ad got pulled, the ad which Michael published when it was first released, broke traffic records for this blog, the one day total was more than most blogs do in a month, that is how much people were emotionally invested in discussing the puppy, the ad, and the controversial nature of puppy mills. The article says that Danica Patrick was left feeling jaded, Danica gave comments to USA Today about not appearing in ... read more ...
Thu 12th February 2015
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Jet.com Raises $140 Million to take on Amazon - Forbes did an article on Jet.com and them raising $140million for the launch of their ecommerce website. The company has been touted as a rival to Amazon. Jet.com founder Marc Lore knows a thing or two about Amazon as he founded Quidsi the company which Lore sold to Amazon for $550 million. From a domaining standpoint, legendary Canadian Garry Chernoff was the owner of Jet.com for many years and sold the domain to the company. From the article: Jet.com has yet to sell anything, but has already raised ... read more ...
 
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Philly Bike Share Program Picks A Name Already Trademarked - In my local news it seems that the city of Philadelphia may be infringing on a trademark. The city is rolling out a bike share program and named it Indego, the only problem is a company in Cleveland has that name trademarked. A representative from the Cleveland company said they will look into whethere or not they want to block the name. Kathleen Conlon, a spokeswoman for Independence Blue Cross said she felt comfortable there would be no one confused by the Indego name. From Philly.com: The catchy ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Energy 1,084; .Delivery 790 - Two new gTLD launched yesterday into General Availability (GA), including those domain names registered in Sunrise and the Early Access Program (EAP) where people pay additional fees to register their domain names early here are the totals after the first day of GA: .Energy 1,084 .Delivery 790 The three new gTLD’s that went into GA on Tuesday had nice 2nd days results as well. .Work added another 819 domains yesterday and is now over 4,650 registrations. .Casa added 10% more registrations, 138 ... read more ...
Wed 11th February 2015
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Here Is The GAC Advice to ICANN from The GAC Communique-Singapore -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that sole around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in Dec 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains. Michael was also one of a 5 Judges comparison for a a Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com competition this year.

Via: thedomains.com

 
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To The CEO Of ICANN Fadi Chehade: Do You Think Vodafone Is The Biggest Domain Hogger? - Two weeks ago we called out the CEO of ICANN Fadi Chehade, for some remarks he made in a story published by the HuffingtonPost.com to wit: “The reality is, the more there are names (new gTLD’s),  less people will actually be hogging names in order to charge a lot for them. Theregister.co.uk then followed up by reporting on the story which included my blog post At the ICANN meeting this week Fadi was asked about his remarks on Hogging domains and according to Domainincite.com Chehade was given ... read more ...
 
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Jay Westerdal's Fegistry Beats Donuts & Famous Four To The new gTLD .Forum - Domain investor and the one of the creators of DomainTools.com, Jay Westerdal’s company Fegistry, LLC just won the rights to the new gTLD .Forum beating Donuts Famous Four. Fegistry won an ICANN Last Resort auction for the new gTLD .Realty ICANN auction results  are public information, so we know that Fegistry paid $5.6 million for .Realty However .Forum, which was scheduled for an ICANN auction later this month, was settled privately so the amount it sold for in the auction is unknown. According ... read more ...
 
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Top 10 Keywords Registered .Com & .Net In January -

Verisign a registry for .Com and .Netpublished a tip 10 keywords purebred in .COM and .NET. for a month of January

Here are a trending registrations from January:

 

 

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Major League Baseball in Trademark Battle over a minute W - Not sure what is going on over at the corporate offices of Major League Baseball, The Washington Post published an article on the trademark battle between Wallet Hub and MLB related to marks owned by both the Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs. You might ask where is there a W in Chicago or Cubs ? After a victory the Cubs raise a flag with the letter W on it at Wrigley Field. The logo seems generic enough. The letter W written in white, block type inside of a bright green box. It stands for WalletHub, ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Work 3,833; .Casa 1,235; .LGBT 404 - Three new gTLD’s had their first day of general availability yesterday and here are the number of domains registered under each extension after the first day according to ntldstats.com: .Work 3,833 .Casa 1,235 .LGBT 404 Minds + Machines is the registry for .Work and .Casa. .LGBT registry is Afilias. Today Wednesday two more new gTLD’s go into General Availability, .Delivery and .Energy. As of publication .Energy has 308 registrations through Sunrise and the Early Access Program, and .Delivery. My ... read more ...
Tue 10th February 2015
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HomeAway Files UDRP On HolidayRentals.com 36K Most Visited Site On The Internet (Alexa) -       HomeAway, Inc. has just filed a UDRP on the domain name HolidayRentals.com. As a domain it’s about as generic as you can get. However HolidayRentals.com is not just a domain name,  it’s a website ranked by Alexa as the 36,000 most visited website on the Internet. The site boasts that they have over 60,000 properties listed in 80 countries. Here is some more information about HolidayRentals.com from its site: “”Founded in 2010 and based in Victoria Avenue London, UK, HolidayRentals.com ... read more ...
 
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Sedo's Transactions Total $1.2 Million Led By Response.com At $150K - Sedo just reported that over the past week, 588 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.2 Million dollars 53% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .com: response.com at 150,00 USD · Top ccTLD: galileo.tv at 18,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: kino.info at 10,000 EUR BookMyFlight.com for $2K was the buy of the week in my opinion and Ninja.tv for $5,800 was an interesting sale. Here are the public sales: ... read more ...
 
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Reuters: US Government Creating Agency To Deal With Cybersecurity Threats - According to Reuters citing a story in the The Washington Post, the U.S. government is creating a new agency to monitor cybersecurity threats, which will be called “The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) According to the story the CTIIC will be an “intelligence center that will ‘connect the dots’ between various cyber threats to the nation so that relevant departments and agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the CIA so they are aware of these ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Names Lori Greiner of QVC/Shark Tank & Bill Rancic Winner of Apprentice As Celeb Judges: #InternetOfficial - Verisign named its two celebrity judges for its #InternetOfficial contest in celebration of the 30th anniversary of .Com. The “Queen of QVC” Lori Greiner  and one of the stars of Shark Tank, joins Panel of Judges for the #InternetOfficial Contest along with Bill Rancic, who amoung his accomplishments was the winner of the first season of NBC’s “The Apprentice. These two celebrities join myself, Steve Manning, naming expert and CEO of naming firm Igor and Anita Campbell, is the Founder, ... read more ...
 
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Indian Banks Offering A Service to Transfer Money Through Facebook - Fund transfer through Facebook is meant for tech-savvy customers, who have access to the internet round the clock, either through smartphones, tablets or laptops. The ATM-to-ATM fund transfer offered by some other banks also uses the same IMPS technology but caters to those who might not have access to the internet all the time. Here, you can transfer money from one bank account to another through the ATM. All you need is your debit card and PIN number. Let us look at how these fund transfer services ... read more ...
 
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.LGBT Launched Today: Meet The initial 5 Pioneers .LGBT Sites - Afilias announced today the first and only top-level domain (TLD) dedicated to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is now open for registration: “dot LGBT” or .LGBT. All LGBT community members and businesses, organizations and other entities serving the community may register for a .LGBT domain name immediately. Roland LaPlante, Chief Marketing Officer of Afilias is quoted as saying, “The large and vibrant LGBT community now has an Internet address that embraces the ... read more ...
 
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Cremation.com Sues Cremations.com, Sold By FMA For TM Infringement & Seeks Transfer of Domain - In a pretty unusual case, Directors Advantage, Inc., of Clinton NC, owner of the domain name Cremation.com filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Cremations.com, for cybersquatting under the Federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), “stemming from wide-ranging aggressive, unethical, and unlawful sales practices and bad faith actions of the registrant of CREMATIONS.COM seeking transfer of the Defendant domain name.” In the Complaint the owner of Cremation.com ... read more ...
Mon 9th February 2015
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Vertical Axis Hit With UDRP on Three Letter .Com NAE.com - Vertical Axis has just been Hit With a UDRP on Three Letter .Com domain name NAE.com. The domain has been owned by the company since at least 2007. When it comes to trademarks filed in the USPTO there is no shortage for NAE National Automotive Experts, L.L.C. filed in 2014. National Association Of Evangelicals filed in 1952 and then again in 2010 National Apartment Exchange filed in 2007 NORTH AMERICAN ENCLOSURES, INC filed in 1978 The parked page is very generic and does not target any of those ... read more ...
 
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Architelos Reports New gTLD's Have 1/4 of a Level Of Abuse Found In Legacy Extensions, But… - Architelos, says that Approximately 50% of all new gTLDs have had one or more domains listed for abuse, with 99% being spam. The sequence of abuse follows an expected pattern where spam is the first to enter, followed by phishing and malware later once the TLDs are more established. Abusive domains were being registered slowly across approximately 20-25% of TLDs in general availability for the first six months of 2014. However, in August the number of gTLDs having domains listed for abuse significantly ... read more ...
 
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Figaro.club Saved In UDRP Against Societe du Figaro, Which Publishes a Daily Newspaper - A one member World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel of Christopher J. Pibus has denied the attempt of the Societe du Figaro S.A. of Paris, France, to grab the domain name figaro.club The domain name is owned by Cognac Inc., Juan Hervada of Florida. It’s an interesting case because the term “Figaro” is heavily trademarked by the Complainant, Societe du Figaro, which has has been publishing a daily newspaper under the historic name LE FIGARO in France since the 1800’s. The Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Vice.com Covers Gary Millin of World.com "The Man Squatting on Millions of Dollars Worth of Domains" -                   Vice.com just did a story of about Gary Millin of World.com who has one of the great domain name Portfolio’s in the world. Unfortunately the author of the story, Jason Koebler chose to go with the “S” word to describe the amazing portfolio of assets they have put together (“Squatting”) rather using the proper term Domain Investor. World Media Group, LLC is the owner of such amazing domain names as Teacher.com,  Accountant.com, Post.com, and World.com to name ... read more ...