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 5th August 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1.7 Million - Sedo just listed its transactions report for the past week and in all 632 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.7 Million. 54% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. If you love hacks you might love lea.se for $1,500 Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: jtf.com at 25,100 USD · Top ccTLD: 13.de at 15,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: eurasianunion.org at 7,800 EUR               ... read more ...
 
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Marchex Sued In Federal Court Over SmartPlanner.com; TM in 2014; Domain Registered in 2002 - This certainly goes into the anyone can sue anyone, for anything at anytime, file. Marchex (MCHX) has been sued over the domain name SmartPlanner.com by SMART PLANNER SUITE, LLC of Newton Massachusetts for trademark infringement under 15 U.S.C. § 1114(a) and cybersquatting under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), and violation of the Anti- Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”). The suit was filed in the United States District Court of Massachusetts today. The relevant allegations from the ... read more ...
 
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GCA.com customer is a Turkish Real Estate Developer – Gürallar Yapı - GCA.com sold back on 7/15/14 for $90,000. The seller was Glenhaven Capital Associates out of Toronto, Canada. The whois has finally updated and the buyer is Gürallar Yapı a Turkish real estate developer out of Istanbul. The domain currently does not resolve, the company website is at gurallaryapi.com. A little about the company: Gürallar Yapı Malz.ve Kim. San. A.Ş. started business in 1948 within the body of Gürallar Group. The name Gürallar has led the way to the creation of brand values ... read more ...
 
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Chinese Police Bust “Domain Brokerage Scam” Which Made Over $4.5 Million, Arrest 100 - According to ifeng.com, a Chinese publication, on July 30, Changping police announced the busting of the an online domain name brokerage scam and detained over 100 suspects. “The scam company, with over 130 employees, markets itself as a subsidiary of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), operating under the cover of domain name brokerage. Its “business development” team regularly searches the web, for information of owners of domain names with commercial potential, and makes contact, ... read more ...
 
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15 Year Old QIQ.com Saved In UDRP Against Trademark Registered in 2012 - The domain name QIQ.com was saved in a UDRP bought by QIQ Communications Pty Ltd of Terrigal, New South Wales, Australia who got a trademark on the term QIQ in 2012 The domain owner was Netico, Inc. of California registered the domain back on March 28, 1999. The panel refused to find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) although there does not seem to be any reason why RDNH was not found. Here are the relevant parts of the one member panel of Gabriela Kennedy: “The Panel accepts that the Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Namejet.com Reports Over $500K in Sales For July -

Namejet.com reported over 500,000 in domain auctions of $2,000 or some-more for a month of July.

All such sales totaled $509,926.00 lead by BigDeals.com during $36.100 and Gains.com for $25,500

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Visa Rebrands From 1 Letter .Me Domain to 12 Letter. Com; V.Me To VisaCheckout.com - Visa Intentional has decided to rebrand its new digital wallet product from V.Me to VIsaCheckout.com stating that the name change is going to help the company “a great deal” in helping explain what the solution is about. It was just back in November that we told you, Visa was rolling out V.Me  a new service  that lets you shop without sharing your card account information with the seller when you pay.”” “V.ME allows you to “make payments without sharing your card account information ... read more ...
 
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Inside a BTC.com Sale With Mike Robertson of Domain Guardians - We are talking today with Mike Robertson of Fabulous.com fame and Co – Founder along with Jen Sale of Domain Guardians. Domain Guardians successfully brokered the name BTC.com for seven figures, He was kind enough to give us a few minutes on just how the sale went down. Jen Sale and Mike Robertson 1) What was the total sales price of the domain, was there a buyer’s premium or any other added costs ? If you can add, was this a straight cash buy, no lease, no equity or any other special financing ... read more ...
 
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Rightside Names Board Of Directors - Rightside Group, Ltd., (NAME) today announced through a press release  the members of its board of directors and executive management team following the completion of Rightside’s spin-off from Demand Media, Inc.® on August 1, 2014. I Rightside Board of Directors Rightside’s board is composed of three independent members and two non-independent members. The board is structured with three standing board committees (an audit committee, a compensation committee, and a nominating and corporate governance ... read more ...
Mon 4th August 2014
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Virtual Reality Could be a subsequent large thing in Advertising - Cotton Delo published an article  on Ad Age that looked at Virtual Reality and its role in advertising. Virtual Reality got a big boost with Facebook purchasing Oculus Rift, the deal closed a couple weeks ago and for a good read on the deal check out The Guardian and their story “Facebook closes its $2bn Oculus Rift acquisition. What next?Social network completes deal announced in March, so what does the future hold for its virtual reality division?” I personally was involved with a Virtual ... read more ...
 
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Gannett Co. (GCI), owners of USA Today, agrees to compensate $1.8 billion for a 73% of Cars.com It Doesn’t Own - According to Bloomberg.com, Gannett Co. (GCI), the owner of USA Today, agreed to pay $1.8 billion for the 73% of  Cars.com that it doesn’t already own already Gannett, which already owns about 27%of Cars.com, values the whole business at about $2.5 billion, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. The deal could be announced as soon as tomorrow, the person said. Jeremy Gaines, a spokesman for Gannett, declined to comment. A representative for Classified Ventures, ... read more ...
 
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The 14 Year Old eMoney.com Saved In UDRP Panel Finds $300K Asking Price Ok - Electronic Transaction Systems Corporation just lost its attempt to grab the domain name eMoney.com which was registered back in January 2000. The domain owner was represented by Ari Goldberger and Jason Schaeffer of Esqwire.com The panel found, unlike other panels have found that they $300K price tag was not outrageous. Here are the facts and finding of three member panel of Debrett G. Lyons, Dianne Cabell, Ho-Hyun Nahm: Complainant provides a system to facilitate monetary payments under the name ... read more ...
 
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Banks, Brokerage and Poker Dominate Over 200 .Financial Sunrise/EAP Domain Registrations - .Financial goes into general availability on Wednesday meaning it becomes available to be registered on a first come basis just completed it Sunrise period for trademark holders and its Early Access Program (EAP), for those who were willing to pay a one time additional fee for early access. Reviewing the zone file so far it looks like many of the major banks, brokerage houses, financial institutions and several online poker sites, have grabbed their domain name in Sunrise but very few “generic” ... read more ...
 
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As The GAC Restricted new gTLD’s Launch Registrants Maybe Unaware They Are already in Violation of TOS - For the first time some of the new gTLD’s that fall within the “GAC Category 1 Advice”, which generally are strings that the GAC determined should not be open to be registered by everyone, have started to launch. From what I’m hearing, the vast majority of the general public along with domain investors, have no idea that such rules exist but they have agreed to follow them in the Terms of Service (TOS) for strings they registered domain names under, As a background the Government Advisory ... read more ...
 
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IronDome.com is out to prevent Patent Disputes - To say that the term Iron Dome is in the news everyday would be an understatement, more like in the news every hour. Iron Dome of course is the the Israeli built defense system that knocks out incoming missiles out of they sky before they hit their target. As a domain name, IronDome.com was registered back in 2004 by McLeod Capital Corp. of Calgary,  Canada. The defense system was launched by Israel in 2011. After being a register.com placeholder for years, on Feb 2, 2011 the name was parked as ... read more ...
Sun 3rd August 2014
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New .Co Site Making National News: ManServants.Co & Frank Schilling Owns The .Com - A new site launched on a .Co domain name is getting some national news coverage, I saw a feature on the site on Fox News yesterday. The site is ManServants.co By the way not that it’s going to come as any shock to anyone in the domain name space, Frank Schilling’s Name Administration owns the domain name ManServants.com So to start with what is a Man Servant you ask? According to the site a Man Servant just to start with will: According to the company’s blog, the San Francisco-based startup  ... read more ...
 
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Neustar Fighting To Keep Contract Worth Half of Their Annual Revenues - Neustar is fighting to keep a contract that makes up over half of its revenue and it has nothing to do with domain names. The company has been in charge of a major governmental telecommunications contract for the last 17 years. The contract deals with the local number portability administrator (LNPA), which helps phone subscribers keep their numbers when switching carriers. The company is now looking to do whatever it can to keep Telcordia, a division of Ericsson, from taking over. Bloomberg noted ... read more ...
Sat 2nd August 2014
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Wikipedia Will Be Restricted Under Right to be Forgotten Law - Juliette Garside wrote a piece for The Guardian today that Google will restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article under the right to be forgotten law. Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia said, “You do not have a right to use the law to prevent Wikipedia editors from writing truthful information, nor do you have a right to use the law to prevent Google from publishing truthful information. Wikipedia can and should work hard to do a good job, just as Google can and should work hard to do ... read more ...
 
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Victoria’s Secret Loses Trademark Battle for Pink in a U.K. - The Pink brand of Victoria’s Secret is everywhere in the U.S., the local mall I go to has a Victoria’s Secret and even when traffic was down and stores closing up, the Victoria’s Secret store was always packed. During the 2008 financial crisis the gourmet popcorn store closed, the bookstore closed but there was a brisk business for underwear. The Pink brand was launched in 2004 and has been a big driver of sales for the company. The brand has been credited with bringing a younger consumer to ... read more ...
 
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ICANN 54 To Be Held In Dublin in Fall of 2015 & ICANN Board Members To Get $45K - The ICANN Board selected Dublin, Ireland as the location of the ICANN 2015 Public Meeting from 18-22 October 2015 This meeting with be ICANN 54. There are plenty of companies in the domain space that have offices in Dublin which offers some big tax advantage over countries like the US including; Afilias Rightside Registry Starting Dot Minds Machines Dot Global TLD Registry Ltd IEDR, the company that runs Ireland’s ccTLD. ICANN also passed a resolution which will raise the compensation to all voting ... read more ...
 
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.Mail Gets Added To .Home and .Corp As Strings Killed Off By Collision - According to a resolution of the ICANN Board the .Mail has joined .Home and .Corp as extension that will not be delegated as part of the collision report. .Mail was basically killed off as part of the “ICANN NAME COLLISION OCCURRENCE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK” which is putting into place a plan which will start the process of freeing up domain names on the Collision list: “Registry Operators will implement a period of, at least, 90 days of continuous controlled interruption. ICANN will monitor and ... read more ...
 
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Fadi Chehadé Gets Two Year Extension & 12.5% Pay Raise From ICANN - The contract of President and Chief Executive Officer Fadi Chehadé has been extended by ICANN for two more years. Chehadé’s base salary will increase by 12.5 percent. Faidi contract with ICANN now expires 30 June 2017. The Board resolution said, “The decision to increase Mr. Chehadé’s compensation was done with recognition and acknowledgment of the work done by the Compensation Committee with Towers Watson to ensure that the increase recommended is reasonable and in line with comparable ... read more ...
Fri 1st August 2014
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Go Daddy Growing Up - Tony Stewart pranks Danica Patrick in new Go Daddy Ad Go Daddy put out a new ad and uploaded it to You Tube a couple days ago. Media Bistro wrote about the ad and gave mention to an  interview on Ad Week by Go DaddyCMO Barb Rechterman  from last year on the company growing up and changing their ad strategy. “This commercial marks another milestone in our brand evolution. The ad definitely uses humor, as our past campaigns have, but this new campaign is not solely about driving brand awareness ... read more ...
 
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Network Solutions Parent Web.com Down 25 % Today & Close To 40% From June - Web.com (WWWW) is down big today after missing their revenue numbers for the second quarter. As of publication with about 40 minutes of trading left, Shares of Web.com are trading at $20 even down 6.55 after hitting an intraday, 52 week low of $19.37. Web.com acquired Snapnames back in May, and they own two of  the top ten  domain registrars Register.com and Network Solutions. The stock was $34.60 back in June when Google announced they would be getting into the business of selling domains. The ... read more ...
 
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.Kiwi Premium Domain Sales Top $250,000 -       The .Kiwi Registry is reporting for the firs time that they have sold over $250,000 in .Kiwi premium domain names. The total amount of sales including domains sold under NDA which comprised about $70,000 of the $250,000 in sales. .Kiwi is also listing some sales as “Undisclosed” as these domains were sold on the basis that the sale and amount could be released publicly but not the domain. These sales are included on the list below. .Kiwi still has thousands of premium domain name avaliable ... read more ...