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 16th December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
RiskIQ.com Files Suit Again Risk.io For Federal Trademark Infringement - RiskIQ.com. sued Risk.IO, for trademark infringement and unfair competition based upon Risk IO’s having improperly and willfully used the names, yesterday in the United States District Court in the Northern District Of California San Francisco Division for trademark infringement asking for disgorgement of profits, for civil penalties, and for preliminary and permanent injunctions enjoining Risk IO, its officers, agents, servants, employees, and all other persons in active concert with it, from ... read more ...
Mon 15th December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Did NamesCon Buy DomainFest.com? -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that owns over 75,000 domain names and whose sell site is during MostWantedDomains.com. Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains.

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Denies Allegation That New gTLD Have Widespread Phishing & Malware Sites - According to  csoonline.com citing Amy Mushahwar, counsel and Chief Information Security Officer at Washington, D.C. law firm ZwillGen PLLC, says: “New domains (new gTLD’s) are being registered as phishing sites and for drive-by downloads of malware.” “Nefarious uses have been very widespread. It’s incumbent upon ICANN to clean up the house for the domains that it currently has before it floods the market with new domains.” She goes on to say “ICANN hasn’t done enough and should ... read more ...
 
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Guess we Was Wrong There Is A Lot Of Cybersquatting Going On In The New gTLD’s: 15X As Much? - Well it seems as the trademark lobby predicted there isa lot of cybersquatting going on in the new gTLD space, a lot more than I thought we would ever see. I was one who thought there would be a negligible amount of trademark infringing domain names registered in the new gTLD space due to the high cost of registration and the small probability of any type in traffic. However just looking at the most recent 400 UDRP/URS cases filed or decided, 69 concerned new gTLD’s domain names (multiple domains ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Panel Gives EasyGroup Rights To The Word “Easy”? Awards Domain It Let Expire In 2009 - A one member UDRP panel, of William R. Towns seemingly granted EasyGroup Limited of London, the right to all domain names that start with the word “easy” that the company has or will trademark in the future. EasyGroup is the owner of a Community trademark (“CTM”) for EASYTRAIN in connection with transportation services, which is was registered on October 21, 2011. I get why the domain holder lost the case. He didn’t respond. He parked the domain and had links to travel on the page. But ... read more ...
Sat 13th December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Monster.com (Jobs) Beats out Monster, Inc. (High End Audio Co.) For The gTLD .Monster - Monster.com,  (NYSE:MWW), the job site has beaten out Monster, Inc. the company that makes high end audio cables and other equipment for the new gTLD .Monster. The contension set was scheuled to do to the ICANN last resort auction next week but Monster, Inc who is best know for high end audio cables just withdrew its application to operate the new gTLD .Monster leaving Monster.com which is the job board company as the remaining applicant. According to its application Monster.com plans to operate ... read more ...
Fri 12th December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
After 7 Years, This Is Where Thedomains.com Has Been & Where it’s Going - Our first post was made on December 4th, 2007 so amazingly enough we have been hard at work over here at thedomains.com for 7 years. I have no idea where the time has gone, but it went, and a lot of it. We have published over 7,700 posts and just under 85,000 comments. We have been busy. As bloggers we have a natural urge to be first to publish “breaking news” and stories. Sometime you will see duplicate content on domain blogs. This is caused by several factors. Press releases being sent out ... read more ...
 
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Best Reverse Domain Hijacking UDRP Ever: Asia Charts Of Singapore Guilty & 1st For Asian UDRP Provider - The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (Kuala Lumpur Office) has returned what we believe is that providers first Reverse Domain Name Hijacking ruling on the domain name AsiaCharts.com, and its on the exact type of case that we have been complaining about, one in which the complainant did not have a trademark. Even worse the domain name was registered 4 years before the Complainant was even formed. The three member Panel of Mr.D.Saravanan, Mr.Michael Soo and Honorable Neil Brown QC found ... read more ...
Thu 11th December 2014
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It’s Go Buddy Time: Say Hello To The Star Of Godaddy’s Super Bowl Commercial “Buddy” -                         As any frequent reader to TheDomains.com knows, there isn’t many things I love more than Dogs so I’m really looking forward to this years Godaddy Super Bowl Commercial Godaddy which announced that their Super Bowl Commercial would feature a Puppy has now released a picture of the adorable pup and after a name the puppy contest that ran on Twitter this week under the Hashtag #GoDaddyPuppy. Godaddy announced just a little while ago that the puppy has been named ... read more ...
 
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New Poll Says 25% Think Organic Co. Should Have .Organic Domain: But Only 396 Have Been Registered - .ORGANIC domain operator Afilias today announced the results of a poll in which “nearly 70% of respondents believe that some companies are misrepresenting themselves as “organic” to command a premium price, and 60% would like a reliable way to distinguish real organic providers online from the pretenders. That’s why almost 60% of respondents claimed they would be more inclined to visit a site on .ORGANIC, which is restricted to verified organic entities, than legacy .COM sites when searching ... read more ...
 
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16 Year Old Domain TVBS.com Lost in UDRP: Privacy is Not a Way a Legitimate Business Would Operate - TVBS.com, a domain name registered on April 20, 1998 has been ordered transferred to a trademark holder in a UDRP decision handed down by the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center (“ADNDRC”). Some of the language in the decision is troubling as is the failure of the panel to even consider or discuss the legal concept of latches due to the 16 year delay in taking action. The Complainant is the TVB, Television Broadcasts Limited (listed on the main board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong ... read more ...
 
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Microsoft “You Can Use Bitcoins to Buy Apps, Games & More for Windows & Xbox Today In The US - In a blog post, Microsoft announced that starting today in the U.S., by using BitPay, the world’s leading bitcoin payment processor, you can trade-in bitcoin – at current market value — and add it to your Microsoft account. Those funds can then be used to purchase content in the Windows Store, or in stores that house Xbox Games, Xbox Music or Xbox Video. “For us, this is about giving people options and helping them do more on their devices and in the cloud,” says Eric Lockard, corporate ... read more ...
 
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TM Holder Of Beauty Lab Loses URDP Bid The Grab The Domain MyBeautyLab.com: Too Generic - The owner of the trademark for BeautyLab just lost its attempt to grab the domain name TheBeautyLab.com The sole UDRP panelist Brigitte Joppich bascially found that although the Complainant had valid trademarks registered before the domain name, including in the country where the domain holder operates, the term Beauty Lab was too generic to enjoy any protection in the UDRP process. Here are the relevant facts and findings: “”The Complainant operates a beauty and cosmetics business distributing ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals .immo 5,274; .Business 3,292; .Software 3,068; .Network 3,055; .Pizza 1,272; .Auction 1,056 - 6 New gTLD’s went into their first day of General Availability (GA) yesterday where they could be registered on a first come, first served basis. Including all domain names registered during the Sunrise Period by trademark holders and in the Early Access Period (EAP) for those who were willing to pay a one time fee for early access more than 17,000 domain names were registered across the six new domain extensions which is the best first day performance by non-city new gTLD’s for a long time. Here ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD Pass 3.5 Million But How Many Are Third Party Paid Registrations? Here’s The Answer - The number of new gTLD registrations just crossed the 3.5 million mark according to ntldstats.com The question is how many of these 3.5 Million new gTLD domain names are paid for registrations made by third parties unrelated to the registry So we are basically backing out any  known free registrations, any domain name registered to the registry itself or to parties related to the registry in which case we are talking about the principal owners of the registry, any domain registered and reserved ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Domain Investor Chad Folkening Interviewed By Inc.com - Inc.com just published an interview with Domain investor Chad Folkening entitled “Domain Pro Spills Secrets for Scoring a Prize URL” Chad Folkening is “a co-founder of Domain Holdiings a developer of online domains, and owner of tens of thousands of URLs, many of which his various companies have turned into profitable websites. And that’s big business–when it comes to selling the dot-coms. “Recently, Domain Holdings sold LocalRegister.com to Amazon. “Some other successes in its past ... read more ...
Wed 10th December 2014
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Which Domains Stand a Strongest Against Phishing Attacks? - On the Afilias blog there was a post by Ram Mohan on extensions and phishing attacks. He took a look at research published by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). Key Findings 1.    Apple became the world’s most-phished brand in 2014 2.    The introduction of new top-level domains did not have an immediate major impact on phishing 3.    Chinese phishers were responsible for 85% of the domain names registered for phishing 4.    Malicious domains and subdomain registrations continue ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Extensions Launching Today .Business, .Network, .Immo, .Auction, .Pizza - Several new gTLD’s go into general availability today where they can be registered on a first come first serve basis and many have quite a few registrations after its Sunrise  period which was for trademark holders and those who paid an extra fee to register the domain during the Early Access Period (EAP) .Business has 506 registrations which is more registrations that 17 fully launched, new gTLD’s have. .Network is close behind with 487 Sunrise and EAP registrations. .Network is very interesting,  ... read more ...
Tue 9th December 2014
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Sedo Transactions Total $1 Million As a Record Number 60% Of Domains Sell At Buy It Now - Over the past week, 458 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1 Million dollars 60% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings which I believe is a record high for Sedo or anyone else in the industry Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: restaurantuniforms.com at 20,000 USD · Top ccTLD: etfs.de at 11,900 EUR · Top “other” TLD: joins.net at 3,500 EUR I wish I can pick out a favorite buy but I have nothing off this list:   ... read more ...
 
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Women.com Named By Inc.com As The #1 Startup In Los Angeles To Watch in 2015 - Inc.com, just published a story on the 7 startups in Los Angeles to watch in 2015 and Women.com came in at number one. “The startup scene in Los Angeles (and Santa Monica) has got the name “Silicon Beach” due to the massive number of tech startups that call the nation’s second largest city home. The spectacular exits of both Maker Studios ($950 million to Disney) and Oculus ($2 billion to Facebook) have spread the word that it’s not just a cool place to start a company, it might actually ... read more ...
 
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NetworkWorld: Companies Switching Back To .Com After Seeing Their New Domains Fall Flat - A really interesting story just got published by NetworkWorld.com, entitled “Companies are movin’ on up to .com domain names” with the subtitle “More businesses are investing in the tried-and-true .com after seeing their efforts with new domain names fall flat.” “I’ve noticed a number of companies movin’ on up to prime online real estate by switching from one of the many alternative domain names to .com. Recently, I wrote about a few companies, including overstock.com, Visa International, ... read more ...
 
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Another No Trademark UDRP Claim Denied Without Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - In yet what is becoming a long line of cases, a UDRP panel summarily dismissed a case against the owner of the domain name RockGaming.com which was registered over 10 years ago back on November 18, 2004 The complaint was brought by Rock Gaming LLC of Michigan who alleged in its complaint that it had “trademark rights in ROCK GAMING” However on this issue the one member panel of Debrett G. Lyons determined “the critical question in this case is whether Complainant has trademark rights in ROCK ... read more ...
 
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Tucows Looking to buy adult to $8million value of shares in mutated Dutch Auction - Tucows Commences Dutch Tender Offer Under the Tender Offer, shareholders will have the opportunity to tender some or all of their shares at a price within the range of $16.50 to $18.50 per share. Based on the number of shares tendered and the prices specified by the tendering shareholders, Tucows will determine the lowest per share price within the range that will enable it to buy up to $8.0 million worth of shares, or such lesser number of shares that are properly tendered. Assuming that the offer ... read more ...
 
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Namescon Registrations Pass 500; Double From Last Year At This Time - According to the conference organizers, NamesCon has broken 500 pre-registered attendees which is double the number of attendees registered at this time last year. NamesCon will be held in Las Vegas January 11th-14th at the Tropicana Hotel and Conference Center. The NamesCon seems to be on track to exceed 800+ attendees this year. RightoftheDot.com will be holding a live and online domain name auction as part of the conference on January 13th, 2015 with online bidding on Snapnames.com NamesCon has ... read more ...
Mon 8th December 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
If You Want One More Problem.com Its At $30K At NameJet.com With a Day To Go - Boca Raton’s own Ariana Grande has been burning up the music charts with the song “Problem” for most of the year. If you have been living off the grid and haven’t’ heard the song or worse if you haven’t watched the video here is a little early Christmas present. Anyway on the domain name front, Problem.com is at auction at Namejet.com. The domain name auction closes tomorrow and bidding has already topped $30K with 224 bidders. The good news is the domain auction is public so you can ... read more ...