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.

Fri 24th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Filed To Recover Another Stolen 3 Letter .Com From Godaddy: CIN.com - A UDRP has been filed on a 3 letter .com and seems to be an attempt by the previous owner, CIN-CORPORACAO INDUSTRIAL DO NORTE, S.A. to recover the domain name CIN.com which appears to have recently stolen from CIN’s Godaddy account The domain name was owned by CIN-CORPORACAO until October 17th when it was transferred to Ename.com of China Here is the current whois record: Registrar: eName Technology Co.,Ltd. Registrar IANA ID: 1331 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@ename.com Registrar Abuse ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The 100 People Who Will Shape The Future of The Internet - Kieren McCarthy wrote a piece on TheRegister.co.uk about the 100 people who will shape the future of the Internet. The article takes a look at the Cross Community Working Group who will set out to propose the right transition plan for IANA. From the article: Unfortunately, despite having had nearly 14 years to think about it, the process for deciding how to move the global internet and its addressing systems out from under a US government contract will be decided in the next four weeks. By 100 people. ... read more ...
Thu 23rd October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Wiley Rein Files Suit Over 14 Stolen Domain Names: 9 Are 3 Letter .com’s - The law firm of Wiley Rein this week filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of an e-commerce company that had 14 domain names stolen by computer hackers based in China from a Godaddy Account. The case, Acme Billing Company v. John Doe, was filed on October 21, 2014 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by David Weslow of Wiley Rein LLP. The domain names mentioned in the suit include these 3 lettered .com’s: AIJ.com HIE.com SJS.com FJD.com IIW.com XJN.com HBU.com PWP.com XPE.com Along ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Reports: .Com/Net Over 130 Million Domains; Revenue Up 4.7%; $1.5 Billion In The Bank - VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported its results for the third quarter of 2014, reporting revenue of $255 millionup 4.7% from the same quarter in 2013. Verisign reported net income of $95 million and diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.69 for the third quarter of 2014, compared to net income of $81 million and diluted EPS of $0.53 in the same quarter in 2013. The operating margin was 54.7 percent for the third quarter of 2014 compared to 54.5 percent for the same quarter in 2013. Financial Highlights Verisign ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Did Facebook.com Just Acquire Messenger.com? Looks Like They Did - We have about 1,000 domain names we track on DomainTools.com and we just noticed that the Whois on the domain name Messenger.com has just changed. The new owner of the domain is the law firm Hogan Lovells LLP of Paris which may not mean too much to you but as we at Thedomains.com follow and write about a lot of UDRP’s we know the law firm represents Facebook in their intellectual property disputes most recently in the case of Facebok.Berlin, and in many other cases including Facebook.info. Facebook ... read more ...
 
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.NYC Landrush Auctions Are Underway - The landrush auctions for .NYC domain names are underway at SnapNames.com according to someone who is involved in the auctions. We previously announced that the auctions would start today on a staggered 3 stage basis going through November 6th. We understand that not everyone who submitted a landrush application went ahead and established a valid account at Snapnames.com. In the cases where more than one landrush application was submitted but the other applicants for the same domain did not establish ... read more ...
 
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A Rumble in a Bronx over a Couple .Nyc Domains - The Daily News has an interesting story today about two .nyc domains that are at the heart of an online turf war in The Bronx. Welcome2thebronx.nyc and welcometothebronx.nyc. are being used as digital bargaining chips as one Bronx blogger wants another to retract statements and stop harassing her in a dispute that seems to be about of all things, a Whole Foods Market. An online dispute rooted in the Bronx has turned into a battle of domains. Blogger Ed Garcia Conde claims he’s being extorted by ... read more ...
 
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$5.6 Million A Good Buy For .Realty To Compete with .Realestate, Realtor, .Property., .MLS & .IMMO? - Last night the highest priced paid for a new gTLD of the three that were at the ICANN last resort auction yesterday was .Realty at $5.6 million purchased by domain industry veteran Jay Westerdal’s company. (The exact price paid was $5,588,888) .Realty joins .Realestate; .Realtor; .Property, .MLS,  .Immo, (which is short for immobilier  which means real estate and is used in France, Germany and Italy) and to a smaller extent .House, .Condos, .Rentals and .Apartments. Its a pretty crowed vertical. So ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals Are .Brutal: .Healthcare 1,406; .Vet 649; .Army 202; .Navy 122 .Airforce 116 - 5 new gTLD went into their first day of General Availability (GA) yesterday where they could be registered on a first come, first served basis and the 5 combined for just over 2,500 registrations. Including registrations by trademark holders in Sunrise and those who paid extra during the Early Access Program (EAP) to register domains ahead of GA here are the totals for the 5 new gTLD’s after their first day: .Healthcare 1,406 .Vet 649 .Army .202 .Navy 122 .Airforce 116 As we spoke about earlier ... read more ...
Wed 22nd October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UK Charity “Homeless International” With an annual bill £20 million Rebrands To An .XYZ -           Homeless International a .UK based charity with an annual budget £20 million announced they havere-branded from Homeless-International.org to Reall.xyz The NGO has been around since 1989 “focusing on urban poverty issues (including slums and social housing) in the developing world” The charity has its own Wikipedia.org page Here is some info from the press release: “Since 2010, our annual budget to accelerate sustainable housing development in Africa and Asia has increased ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
VirnetX Gets Patent For “Secure Communications Using Secure Domain Names” - VirnetX™ Holding Corporation (NYSE MKT: VHC), an Internet security software and technology company, announced today that on October 21, 2014, it was granted a new patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); Patent no. 8,868,705, entitled “Agile Network Protocol for Secure Communications Using Secure Domain Names.” Multiple applications are in development that run on VirnetX’s Gabriel Technology Platform and these applications communicate securely using VirnetX’s ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Launches “Eureka” Campaign To Promote .Com/.Net Domains; Here a 1st Video - Verisign, the registry operator for .com, .net  announced today it was launching a new campaign to promote .Com and .Net domain names including a series of “”short, humorous videos this month” “As any aspiring entrepreneur knows, great business ideas can come from anywhere, at any time. The Verisign video spots are part of a new online campaign featuring that “eureka” moment that comes with an idea, creatively dramatized by a big, fuzzy mascot, and lets the viewer know his or her next ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Houston We Have A Problem: 2 URS Examiners Can’t Agree If The Same Company Owns A Trademark - My man Raymond Hackney who writes posts for thedomains.com, as well as his own blog at tldinvestors.com, pointed out two diametrically opposed URS decisions filed by the same complainant Aeropostale Procurement Company, Inc. of New York, one of which concludes they own the trademark to the clothing line of Aeropostale and the other examiner finding they do not. In the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proceeding on the domain name Aeropostale.Uno, decided on April 10th, 2014, the examiner Alan L. Limbury ... read more ...
 
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86% Of Lawyers Not “Eager” to Get a .Lawyer/.Attorney Name? That Only Leave 200K That Want One - My fellow domain Blogger Konstantinos Zournas of OnlineDomain.com cited a poll on his site today in a post entitled: “83% Of Lawyers Not Eager To Get .Lawyer Or .Attorney Domains” Konstantinos which is doing a great job this year on his blog, seemed to have fallen for a poll whose results are statically fatally faulted. Konstantinos did not conduct the poll, the poll was conducted by Law Times News but was the basis for Konstantinos post. If you read some stuff on poll theory  (as a Political ... read more ...
Tue 21st October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1.4 Million -

Sedo.com Released a sale news and  over a past week, 484 exchange took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1.4m. 51% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings.

Highlights of open sales are:

· Top .coms: localgenius.com during 14,000 USD
· Top ccTLD: slv.fr during 5,000 EUR
· Top “other” TLD: designs.net during 16,800 USD
 

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Vet, .Army, .Navy & .Airforce Launching Tomorrow Have a Total Of Less Than 250 Domains - In addition to .Healthcare, four other new gTLD’s are launching tomorrow into General Availability; three are focused on the military,  .Army, .Navy .Airforce then there is .Vet which could mean Veterans as in those who served in the military or Veterinarians those doctors who treat animals Thought the Sunrise period for trademark holders and the five day Early Access Program for those who paid an additional fee to register a domain ahead of GA here are the total number of registrations as of ... read more ...
 
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Afilias: Joins Minds + Machines & Centralnic To London AIM Exchange To Raise $100 Million - Afilias today announces its intention to apply for admission of its issued and to be issued Ordinary Shares to trading on AIM, a market operated by the London Stock Exchange (“Admission”) to raise $100 Million dollars. “The $100 million will be used to: ·      Acquire contested nTLDs in the upcoming auctions; ·      Fund attractive acquisition opportunities including existing TLD assets and operating businesses in the Registry Operator and Registry Service Provider   areas; and ·      ... read more ...
 
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Chinese Government Launches Attack Against iCloud Users - According to Ars Technica it seems that China is running a man-in-the-middle attack on iCloud users. They have a screenshot of this on their website, this was discovered by a group called GreatFire.org. From the article: GreatFire.org, a group that monitors censorship by the Chinese government’s national firewall system (often referred to as the “Great Firewall”), reports that China is using the system as part of a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack on users of Apple’s iCloud service within ... read more ...
 
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Google Trying New Ways to Stifle Piracy - Google is looking to fight piracy with links to legitimate websites when someone searches for an illegal site, now that is if they want to pay to play. They are also playing around with the auto-complete, they will demote  the predictions that link to illegal sites. Stephanie Mlot covered the story for PC Mag In an effort to fight piracy, Google is testing new ad and search-result formats to help users find legitimate sources of media. In addition to removing sites that traffic in pirated content ... read more ...
Mon 20th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Breast Cancer Awareness by Bluehost.com Using Pink.Host & Gets Blue.Host As a Founder -               According to a press release we received today, “Bluehost, an elite player in the industry, was selected as a Pioneer of the .Host namespace. As part of the program, Bluehost is keen on using and promote their primary brand on the blue.host domain after the name, part of the 100,000+ names in ICANN’s collision list, is released in November, 2014. On another note, also included in the PR is that Bluehost is turning Pink this entire month, running a special campaign for it ... read more ...
 
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If You Lie About Your Trademark, That Should Automatically Be Reverse Domain Hijacking - Eric Levy of New York just lost his attempt to grab the generic domain name yourneighborhood.com in a UDRP, based off a trademark for YOURNEIGHBORHOOD LOVE WHERE YOU LIVE, registered on December 10, 2013. The domain name YourNeighborhood.com was first registered on November 25, 1998 The one member panelist should have found Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) since he found the complainant lied about the trademark he held and though the case out immediately. While we commend the one member panel ... read more ...
 
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132 .Healthcare Domains Registered in EAP 5: Cancer.Healthcare; Ebola.Healthcare - According to Registered.Today 132 domain names in the new gTLD .Healthcare were registered on day 5 of the Early Access Program. Under the EAP for an extra fee, domain names can be registered ahead of General Available (GA) and some of those domain names carried a premium registration and renewal. Many of the domain names were diseases or medical conditions with some Brands thrown in. .Healthcare is launching into general availability.  The price for a non-premium registration is around $49 at Godaddy. As ... read more ...
 
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High Court in a UK: ISP Must Block Sites Selling Counterfeit Goods - According to Theguardian.com, The High Court in the UK has ruled that Internet Service Providers (ISP) must try to block sites selling counterfeit goods at their own cost. “The case was brought by luxury brands in the Richemont/Cartier group, demanding that the UK’s five major ISPs – BSkyB, BT, EE, TalkTalk, and VirginMedia – block six websites sporting fake versions of their brands and selling counterfeit goods. Richemont stated that these were the first in a line-up of 239,000 potentially ... read more ...
 
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Rightside Partners With CloudCannon.com - According to a press release out today Rightside (NAME) has partnered with CloudCannon.com which just received $500,000 in funding from “some leading New Zealand investors including Sam Morgan, Phil McCaw, Stephen Tindall and Simon Holdsworth” “On a technical level, the partnership also allows CloudCannon to streamline one of the trickiest parts of setting up a website – domain name and DNS settings – and make it as seamless as the rest of the CloudCannon experience.” Dwayne Walker, Senior ... read more ...
Sun 19th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
England Turning Up The Heat on Internet Trolls - England is getting tougher on Internet trolls it seems, the BBC is out along with a host of other publications, that the most serious offenders could now see their sentence quadrupled from 6 months in jail to 24 months in jail. I remember last year reading an article about a British boxer, The Guardian covered it, When Curtis Woodhouse lost his English light-welterweight title on points to Shane Singleton on Friday night , he was branded a “disgrace” on the social networking site by ‘Jimmyob88′‏, ... read more ...