IP Auction to include patents, trademarks.
I just arrived at the Swissotel in Chicago for a two day conference and auction organized by Ocean Tomo. The auction will take place Thursday afternoon and include dozens of patents and trademarks. The most recent auction netted $26M in sales, although only one domain name was sold.
The auction typically includes domain names from large companies like IBM. The last auction included Alerts.com, but buyers weren’t bidding. Unfortunately, this week’s auction did not receive any domain name submissions.
One of the reasons non-corporate domain name owners haven’t submitted domains is the listing price of $1,000-$3,000 per domain. However, this does include entry into the event. Sales commissions are also high compared to Moniker’s live auctions. Moniker charges a flat 15% of sales, whereas Ocean Tomo charges a 10% buyer’s premium and 15% seller’s premium.
Ocean Tomo’s auction may be an ideal place for people with good end-user domains to reach their audience. However, there will be considerable “pre-sales” required to the companies to get them to bid on the domain at auction. Compare this to Moniker’s TRAFFIC auctions, which have many active and knowledgeable bidders but not necessarily the end users. Moniker is branching out to auctions that hit end users, such as at the recent InterNext conference.
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