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 22nd January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
22 Year Old Makes $85,000 in 9 Days Selling ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com - The auction for ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com ended last night on Flippafor USD $85,000 – a mere 9 days after the site was launched on January 12th. Today there is a press release out on it already “ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com, a mere 9 days after the site was launched on January 12th. The site managed to secure over $20,000 in sales and 2.5 million visits in its first 24 hours of operation after it was launched by 22 year-old Australian entrepreneur and web developer, Mathew Carpenter. The site ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Vlaanderen 3,880; .Brussels 3,742; .Forsale 2,197 - Three new gTLD’s went into general availability (GA) yesterday where they could be registered on a first come, first served basis. Here are the totals after the first day of GA. The totals include all domain names registered by trademark holders in the Sunrise Period and those who paid an extra fee to get early access in a landrush period or in an Early Access Program (EAP). Any domain that received more than one landrush application for the two Geographic extensions (.Vlaanderen; .Brussels) ... read more ...
Wed 21st January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SearchMetrics.com "The Rising and Falling Stars in Google US - Search Metrics takes a look each year at who fell in the rankings and who saw their website rise on Google. In addition to just looking at winners and losers they look into why some sites succeeded while other sites took a dip. If you are interested in SEO the article is very much worth reading to see their analysis and what affects ranking trends both short and long term. From the article: As another year in SEO ends, it’s time to take a look back at the rising and the falling stars in SEO Visibility ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Trademark Holders Make Cybersquatting Profitable By Failing To Act: BentleyMotorCars.com 9 Years Old - We have mentioned before that when it comes to the levels of  cybersquatting trademark holders have to share the blame by creating the ecosystem for high profits for those registering bang on trademark infringing domains and allowing them to be very profitabily parked for many year before taking action Today we see another one such case. Bentley Motors Limited just won a UDRP on BentleyMotorCars.com which is they way they are frequently described.  A Google search for the term returns a ton of ... read more ...
Tue 20th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
MaxHardcore.com sells for $10,100 - Just one bidder stepped up and outbid the $10,000 high bid placed in December, for MaxHardcore.com. The auction closed at $10,100 . Back at the end of December, Max Hardcore said he would be bidding on the domain. Today that changed, in an article for Xbiz he said: — Max Hardcore won’t be bidding on the domain name MaxHardcore.com, which goes up for auction later today at NameJet.com. The porn actor, producer and director who was convicted on obscenity charges and released several years ago said ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Panel Decides To "Terminate" UDRP On Telepathy's SDT.com W/Fed Case Pending + 1 Vote RDNH - 2 members of a 3 member UDRP decided to terminate a UDRP filed by SDT International limited company of Belgium (SDT) on the three letter .com, SDT.com from Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc. who was represented by Wiley Rein LLP. The three member panel spit in its decision with 2 members voting to terminate the the proceeding since Telepathy has already filed a federal lawsuit seeking a declaratory order that Telepathy’s registration of SDT.com did not violate the trademarks of SDT The third member ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1million led by BabyCity.com during $35,000 -

Over a past week, 603 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1 Million Dollars

54% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings. 

Highlights of open sales are:

  • Top .coms: babycity.com at 35,000 USD
  • Top ccTLD: heg.es at 13,000 EUR
  • Top “other” TLD: sugar.net at 15,000 USD

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Land.com Gets A $850K Bid In RightoftheDot Extended Domain Auction: Now Over $1.1M In Bids - The domain name Land.com has gotten a verified bid of $850,000 in the RightoftheDot.com extended auction from the Namescon conference running on SnapNames.com The domain has a stated reserve of $1M-5MM but the fact that Snapnames.com took the bid means by its own rules than the bid represents at least 50% of the actual reserve price. There is now over $1.1 million dollars in bids. The auction does not close on SnapNames.com until February 5th at 3:15pm EST in accordance with Snapnames.com normal ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Backend Provider Open Registry Acquired For Up To $22.6 Million -

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

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
"The Donald" Goes After The Domain TrumpCard.com In A UDRP - Domain Trump has filed a UDRP on the domain name Trumpcard.com The domain name TrumpCard.com was first registered in 1998. While the Donald owns some casinos or at least has his name on them, the term Trump Card has a meaning well before the time there was a Donald Trump and well before he ever owned a casino. The domain is owned under privacy since 2011. The last time it was owned by someone not under privacy it was owned by a E. Dillon, of  London, and  a click on the page by the word Trumpcard.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Fiesta.com Hit With A UDRP -           The extremely generic domain name Fiesta.com has been hit with a UDRP filing. The complainant is Dean Simmons, Sàrl Heintz Van Landewyck S.à.r.l. which as the best as I can tell has a pending but not yet registered trademark on the term and is actually facing abandonment by April 2015. Del Monte foods  also has a recently filed trademark on the term Fiesta going all the way back to May 14th 2014. As for the domain name it’s registered under privacy at Moniker but was owned prior ... read more ...
Mon 19th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
MaxHardcore.com With a High Bid Of $10K Sells Tomorrow on Namejet.com - The domain name MaxHardcore.com which we wrote about a few weeks ago is at auction at Namejet.com and will sell to the highest bidder which is at the moment $10,000. The closed domain name auction has 85 bidders (including myself who has no intention of bidding) has a high bid of $10,000 by bidder ID “chelsearam” There are only 2 other bidders at over $1,000 at this point,  which anyone in the domain industry will tell you doesn’t mean much with a day to go. The domain name was owned by the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
51 of 64 Finalists & Alternatives for SXSW Accelerator Competition Using A .Com: Next is .io - FINALISTSCrate.IO Vorarlberg, Austria Crate.IO has built a new breed of database to serve today’s mammoth data needs. Based on the familiar SQL syntax, Crate combines high availability, resiliency, and scalability in a distributed design that allows you to query mountains of data in real-time, not batches. Crate.IO is easy to scale and simple to use.Hypori Austin, TX Hypori is an enterprise software company providing Virtual Mobile Infrastructure (VMI) – accessible from Android and iOS devices. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Breaking: Domaining.com Is NOT Sold, Yet - On Friday the daily newsletter of Domaining carried this simple message: “”Game is over. Next week I will announce the new owner of Domaining.com” That one sentence that appeared on the top of the Domaining.com newsletter caused the domain blogosphere to blow up all weekend with posts about the “sale” of Domaining.com even leading to many bloggers and commentator guessing as to whom the buyer was. I reached out on to Saturday to Francois Carrillo who owns and operates Domaining.com to find ... read more ...
Sun 18th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Beware: DefendNames.com Spamming, Trying To Sell Unregistered Domains For $39.95 -     Over the last several days I have been receiving over 20 emails a day offering me domains for sale for $39.95 each. Until tonight I didn’t pay too much attention but the sheer volume of the emails I have received today led to me to check it out. So the emails are coming from support@rosegardenestates.com Here is the email including just one of the many domain names I was offered: “Thank you for your interest in the domain name, clearwateraccident.com. As you are probably aware, domains ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Owner of Sols.co Raises $8.5 Million & Buys Sols.com - Forbes Magazine published a story about the women who started Sols, which has one storefront in New York and makes shoes using a 3d printer and a iPad which measures the foot and provider the information to 3d print the shoe. It’s an amazing rags to riches story, about getting a startup off the ground, entrepreneurship, raising seed money and an example of the use of this truly game changing technology of 3d printing. Of course part of the story, concerns domain names as well. The company recently ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
EZTV packs adult the Virtual Bags and Moves to .Ch from .IT - Just like The Pirate Bay has done several time, EZTV has had to pick up and move, leaving EZTV.it and moving to EZTV.ch. BetaNews wrote: EZTV made a quick comeback, but problems have continued for the service, as Italian authorities closed in on its .IT domain. This has forced the organization to pack up shop and make a move to a new country where things will, hopefully, be calmer. The old site, EZTV.it, has fled to Switzerland, where it now resides under EZTV.ch. According to TorrentFreak, “Over ... read more ...
Sat 17th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.ForSale (IN EAP) Has Almost 200 Registrations: Apple & Microsoft Leads The Way - The new gTLD .Forsale is launching next week and has just under 200 registrations through Sunrise and the first two days of the Early Access Program (EAP) Both Apple and Microsoft went in heavy into the Sunrise program registering most of their tech product names in .forsale. If your wondering iphone and ipad are not on the list because  Apple bought a trademark block on all Rightside extensionsfor those terms. However, Apple didn’t register iphones.forsale, ipads.forsale or Apples.forsale Someone ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Fox Sports Owned Domain SportsSouth.com Saved In A UDRP Decision: No Use in 4+ Years Is Not Bad Faith - Well here is something you don’t see very often in UDRP land a Fortune 500 Company defending a domain name it owns against a UDRP claim and they didn’t even elect to pay for a three member panel The UDRP was brought by Sports South, LLC on the domain SportsSouth.com which is owned by Fox Sports Networks, LLC and registered at Mark Monitor The Sports South, LLC domain name claimed that there company was formed in 1972 but they just filed for a trademark on the term Sports South in January 2014. Mark ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Republican Net Neutrality Bills Would Strip FCC Of Its Power to Regulate The Net - Gizmodo published a piece on Republican legislation that could neuter the Federal Communications Commission, and leave consumers with no one watching their back vs the interests of telecom companies. President Obama recommended a plan that would reclassify internet providers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, giving the government agency more authority to quash telecom giants’ plans to create “internet fast lanes.” This would seem to go around that and take away the power the FCC ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
A Couple Interesting Websites Getting a lot of attention - Australia and New Zealand each have websites that our causing quite a stir,  ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com which Shane wrote about last night is on Flippa. HackersList is based out of New Zealand and they got a write up on ReadWrite.com. You can check out Shane’s article about the Flippa aspect of ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com here, I found an interview on Slate with the 22 year old founder, he explains how it got started in a short interview. The comment section shows how they are already getting copied, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Snapchat Loses UDRP On SnapChatCheck.com - Snapchat, Inc. just lost a UDRP on the domain name snapchatcheck.com and the domain holder didn’t even respond. Houston Putnam Lowry, Chartered Arbitrator, was the sole  Panelist. Here are the highlights: “Complainant claims Respondent has not provided any bona fide offering of goods or services, or made a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the disputed domain name.  Complainant claims Respondent uses the disputed domain to pass itself off as Complainant. This Panel disagrees after doing ... read more ...
Fri 16th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The RightoftheDot.com Extended Auction From Namescon is Live On Snapnames.com - The extended RightoftheDot.com auction is now live on Snapnames and there is already almost $250,000 in bids. As you know by now almost $1 million dollars in domains were sold on Tuesday at the Namescon show in Las Vegas. There are over 300 domain names in the extended auction that will close on February 5th at 3:15 pm EST subject to Snapnames.com normal closing rules. The extended auction includes the 40 or so  domain names that didn’t sell in the live auction along with over 250 new domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Roadcam.com Saved in a Very Interesting UDRP With A Very Good Lesson In TM Law - In a very interesting UDRP decision Roadcam, Inc. lost its bid to grab the domain roadcam.com The domain holder is Jon Smejkal of Pittsburg, California Actually there were three domain names in disputed domain names, roadcam.com and roadcam.net dashcamlab.com The case is really interesting because of the allegations of the parties which I have highlighted below the fact that the “trademark holder” alleges common law rights, there is an relationship of some sort between the parties and a finding ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New Gtld Resource Site Registered.Today is For Sale - Gtld.Link is a new forum that focuses strictly on the new gtlds, I just joined a couple nights ago. While I was going through the names for sale listings, I came across a listing for Registered.Today. I have no affiliation with Registered.today, no advertising relationships etc… I just thought it worth a mention for someone active in the new gtld field to check it out, I have found the website useful. ... read more ...