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 23rd December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
15 Year Old Geo Domain ParrotCay.com Saved In UDRP Registered 7 Years Before TM: No RDNH - A three panel UDRP decision rejected the complaint of Como Holdings USA, Inc. on the 15 year old domain name ParrotCay.com as well as ParrotCay.co which was registered on the first day of general availability by the owner of the .com, Sybaris LLC The decision was handed down by the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (Kuala Lumpur Office) (the “Centre”). Its another case where in my opinion a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) should have been found. The domain name is 15 ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Asks What’s Really New in a New gTLD Space? 16% Of New gTLD’s Are Not Registered In .Com - Verisign published a post on its blog yesterday entitled “What’s Really New in the New gTLD Space” which was written by Andy Simpson The piece has some interesting stats and other information that are worth a look in the continuing .Com Vs. New gTLD debate that has been raging on CircleId in the past couple of weeks. Like all stats you can interpret them many ways. I think the most interesting stats contained in the post is that 16% (a little less than 500K domains names) of domain names registered ... read more ...
 
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After Winning 10 Uniform Rapid Suspensions in Dec. Nissan Loses Its 1st on Nissan.technology - Nissan Motors has just lost it first Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proceeding after winning ten URS in just December. Richard W. Hill, as Examiner declined to suspend the domain even though the domain holder failed to respond. The opinion is completely devoid of any reason of why the complaint was dismissed, or how it varied from the other 10 URS Complaints that won Nissan on new gTLD domain name. I mean there is not a word as to the reasoning behind the decision. All the examiner said was: ” ... read more ...
 
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PIR (.Org Registry) Offers New IDN Domains In Three Strings - According to a press release  Public Interest Registry (PIR) – the not-for-profit operator of the .org domain registry, today announced the general availability of three new Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) which translate to “organisation” or “institution” in non-Latin-based scripts – one in Devanagari, one in Cyrillic, and one in simplified Chinese. Previously only available to qualified domain trademark holders, all interested companies, organisations and individuals can now ... read more ...
 
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.Club Passes .Berlin & Moves Into 2nd Place As The Most Registered New Domain Extension - .Club has just passed .Berlin and is now the second most registered new domain extension. According to ntldstats.com, .Club now has 156,821 domain names registered passing .Berlin which has 155,123 domain names registered. .Berlin offered free domain names for approximately 2 days and about 75,000 of the 155,000 domain names were registered for free. The .Club team have literally been traveling the world, several times over, during 2014. (In terms of disclosure our regular readers know that a consulting ... read more ...
 
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Page Howe Opens Office In Los Angeles To Promote Adoption Of .La Domain Extension - According to a Press Release out today, my fellow Sherpa Page Howe, a “veteran domain name investor and educator, has been tapped to lead the effort to educate and encourage adoption of the .LA domain extension in and around Los Angeles and Southern California. ” “Domain names are the real estate of the Internet, and the .LA domain namespace is the exact location for online marketing in Los Angeles. .LA Domain names are available now at most major registrars, www.la and LaDomainNames.com. Page ... read more ...
Mon 22nd December 2014
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UDRP Filed on 14 Year Old Domain: Domain Holder Objects To 2014 Trademark Filing - This is a pretty interesting UDRP. Basically you have the Complainant which has been operating under the the domain name directorschoicetourandtravel.com since 2006 filed for a federal trademark on the term DIRECTOR’S CHOICE around July 15th of this year with the USPTO, which is says its been using “since at least as early as April 1997 used in connection with Complainant’s Services, namely, “arranging travel tours for music organizations; organization of travel” The domain name directorschoice.com ... read more ...
 
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Hottest Phrase Of The Moment: IcantBreathe.com Sells - The domain name IcantBreathe.com which matches one of the hot phrases in life and on social media, just sold earlier this month The domain name was listed for sale on CATCHYDOMAINS.COM The buyer has a page up and the domain already has an Alexa.com ranking of 11M. I spoke to the new owner of the domain who told me he has already received several offers on the domain. Of course the phrase not only is “Hot” as its in the news every day, its highly divisive. It maybe another example of a domain ... read more ...
 
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Aeropostale Wins 1st Uniform Rapid Suspension Appeal On Aeropostale.Uno - The clothing company Aeropostale has won what we believe is the first appeal of a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proceeding. Back in April a URS examiner  Alan L. Limbury,denied the Complaint of  Aeropostale Procurement Company on the domain name aeropostale.uno finding that “Complainant here submitted with its complaint copies of the certificates of registration of seven United States AEROPOSTALE trademarks, four of which are in the name R. H. Macy Co., Inc., two of which are in the name Aeropostale ... read more ...
Sun 21st December 2014
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Goliath vs Goliath as Google Takes On Hollywood in Piracy Wars - More and more tidbits continue to come out of the Sony leak, The Verge reported on a meeting between Sony, Google and Homeland Security. The Verge a week later ran a story about Google being incensed over Hollywood’s anti-piracy measures. Google was especially concerned with “Project Goliath” The project’s goal was to find a way to block pirate sites from appearing online. From the article: After hacked documents revealed that Sony and other media companies were attempting to pass harsh ... read more ...
Fri 19th December 2014
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C-and-A.com Wins UDRP On C-A.Com Purchased For $3K & Offered To .Com Holder For $340K - Cofra Holding AG of Zug, Switzerland which owns the domain name C-and-A.com, just won the rights to the domain name C-A.Com. The three member panel did not like the fact that the domain owner who purchased the domain name C-A.com in January 2014 for $3k was asking for six figures to the .com holder of the domain name CandA.com Here are the relevant facts and findings by the panel: T the Complainant owns over 90 trademark registrations in various countries around the world, including the United States ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
DNA’s First Official “State of a Domains” Newsletter Now Published Completely in Chinese! - TLD Registry the company behind Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website, have released a Mandarin version of the State of the Domains quarterly publication that is published by the Domain Name Association. They published on their website: TLD Registry is extremely proud to be responsible for the full layout and design of the Domain Name Association’s (DNA) first official newsletter, released this past October at ICANN 51 in Los Angeles. The publication provides insight to the use of domain ... read more ...
Thu 18th December 2014
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.Club takes 6 out of a tip 10 New gTLD Sales on Sedo in 2014 - Sedo reported their top 10 new gTLD sales of 2014 and .club dominated the list with 6 out of 10. Things seem to be on the upswing as the company raised another $3million according to DomainNameWire. Upswing in new gTLDs such as .club and .berlin More than 300 new TLDs have been launched in the market in 2014 and currently there are more than 3.5 million new domains registered.  The trading among new gTLD domains is already in full swing and the development of sales at Sedo’s marketplace has ... read more ...
 
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Flipboard Wins TM Dispute Leading to Flowboard Changing Their Name - Simon Sage reported for iMore that Flowboard an app that allows you to create presentations lost a trademark dispute with Flipboard. The company has decided to change their name and rebrand to FlowVella. FlowVella CEO, Brent Brookler told Geek Wire the changed had already been in the works, the company will keep the same F in their logo. From the article: Flowboard’s slick app for creating presentations will be known as FlowVella from here on out. The change comes at the heels of a trademark court ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
“SeekingAlpha: Sears & Staples More Valuable As Domain Names Than The Brick & Motar Stores” - SeekingAlpha, just published s story right out of Rick Schwartz Playbook and something he has expressed for years on his blog, that Sears and Staples might be more valuable as domain names than as brick and mortar stores. “”What happens when a brick and mortar retailer’s brand becomes more valuable as a domain name than as a chain of stores?”” ” We might be seeing the answer to that question at department store legend Sears Holdings (NYSE: SHLD) and office supply category killer Staples ... read more ...
 
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Internet Advertising Revenues Hit $12.4 Billion Highest Quarter on Record - According to a press release out today, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US, Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. climbed to an historic high of $12.4 billion for the third quarter of 2014, which is the highest quarter ever, besting the record-setting revenues of Q4 2013, which came in at $12.1 billion. “This milestone demonstrates marketers’ commitment to digital” Q3 2014’s milestone numbers represent a year-over-year uptick of 17% over the $10.6 billion reported for ... read more ...
 
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Owner of Baby.com Wins .Baby For $3.1 Million Dollars. - Johnson Johnson which has owned and advertised  Baby.com for many years, just won the ICANN Last Resort Auction for the new gTLD .Baby for 3,088,888 Google, Minds + Machines, Donuts, Radix and Famous Four lost in the auction and unlike private auctions will not get any share of the winning bid. In the other ICANN  last resort auction the Canadian Real Estate Association beat Afilias for .MLS, paying $3,359,000. Still seems to me that the ICANN auctions are going to less money than the private ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Round Up: iWantValium.com; Viagra.Ninja; Minnesota.Life; Landshark.Beer; Playstation.co - A few UDRP/URS case caught my eye over the last day or so. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG the makers of Valium filed a UDRP on iwantvalium.com Doesn’t everyone? The domain name was just registered back in June Pfizer Inc just won two separate UDRP on the domain names ViagraNinja.com and Viagra.Ninja Now that those are great domains. The .com was registered a year ago, however I have no idea of how Pfizer which has a market cap of almost $200 Billion failed to register Viagra.Ninja, a domain they could ... read more ...
Wed 17th December 2014
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Godaddy Sued For $50 Million By Russian Millionaire Konstantin Malofeev - According to Courthousenews.com, GoDaddy.com has been sued for $50 million by A Russian millionaire claiming Godaddy defamed him by hosting a number of websites that accuse him of fraud. Konstantin Malofeev sued GoDaddy, Domains by Proxy and John Doe – the anonymous operator of the websites – on Dec. 14 Malofeev claims he is a businessman, politician, and chairman of the board of directors of Marshall Capital Group, one of Russia’s largest equity investment groups. He claims that a number of ... read more ...
 
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.Website Collision Domains Give A Boost In Registrations: Here Are Available LLL/NNN/One Word Domains - .Website which had its ICANN collision lists freed up recently has seen a nice bounce in daily registrations. Like a bunch of other TLDs, the spike in registrations appears to have come on the back of Black Friday and Cyber Monday registrations. The TLD saw volumes of 5 times that of the previous day’s registrations on Black Friday – close to 1,200 names in day. Cyber Monday brought more even more registrations. Some quick facts about .website registrations: Average daily new registrations in ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Believes They Had A Spear Phishing Attack in November - ICANN is looking into an attack on their systems that took place back in November, they have posted an announcement on their website and have said to stay tuned for further updates by checking back. An email also went out to those using the CZDS: In order to continue using CZDS, please visit http://czds.icann.org and follow the instructions there to request a new password. We suggest that you take appropriate steps to protect any other online accounts for which you might have used the same username ... read more ...
Tue 16th December 2014
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NamesCon Acquires DomainFest & Will Be Part of NamesCon 2015 Las Vegas! - Well our hunch was right yesterday, as today NamesCon announced they have acquired DomainFest from Oversee.net in a press release we just received. “Starting with small conferences in LA and Barcelona, Oversee grew Domainfest into a large, global conference series, attracting domainers, marketing professionals and celebrity speakers from all over the world.” “We are very proud of the industry-leading conference that we built up over the years”, said Debra Domeyer, CEO of Oversee.net. “DomainFest ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1 Million - Over the past week just 573 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1 Million Dollars 57% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: competitiveintelligence.com at 35,477 USD · Top ccTLD: ferienhausschweden.de at 4,500 EUR · Top “other” TLD: ovn.org at 9,888 USD KingFashion.com at $10,000 was one of our domains that sold A few notes: Someone paid almost $2K for shooopping.com Someone paid $4K for snowflakedb.net Crowdmoney.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Shoes.com Sold - According to Bloomberg.com, Shoes.com has sold “Brown Shoe Co. (BWS), owner of the Famous Footwear retail chain, sold its Shoes.com online division to a closely held Seattle company pushing into a market Shoeme, parent of OnlineShoes.com and Shoeme.ca, is purchasing Shoes.com for an undisclosed price, the companies said in separate statements today. ” “Shoeme Chief Executive Officer Roger Hardy has been working to move into footwear retailing on the Web. After selling Vancouver-based Coastal ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Is The 1st New gTLD To Break 750,000 Registered Domains - .XYZ has become the first new gTLD to break through the 750,000 mark for domain name registrations. According to the .XYZ registry the number of registered domain names is 750,073 The 750,000th domain name to be registered was Chez.XYZ that was registered today at the domain name registrar Gandi.net. We at TheDomains.com were the first to figure out that NetworkSolutions,  which is  part of the Web.com group (WWWW), were stuffing free .XYZ domain names into customer’s accounts when the extension ... read more ...