News
Namecheap posts $37 million revenue in Q1
Company’s revenue tops forecast for Q1.
Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall
Privately held domain name registrar Namecheap has reported $37 million in gross revenue for Q1 2019. This represents 21% year-over-year growth and is about $3 million more than the company forecasted.
Namecheap expects to generate $148 million in revenue for 2019. It added 235,000 customers in the first quarter.
The registrar now has about 10.5 million domains under management, up from 10.0 million in September 2018.
Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall told Domain Name Wire that the company is continuing to see growth in add-on products. The company is also shifting to higher-quality domains.
“That’s why the growth with domains under management is a bit slower,” he explained. “The lower priced TLDs (under a dollar) that we’ve shifted away from are cycling through as they have lower renewal rates. So, in essence, we are focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to domains and it reflects directly in our revenue numbers.”
Namecheap is the seventh largest registrar for .com and the second largest registrar for new top level domain names.
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Why Wix, Weebly in Squarespace exist alongside WordPress
WordPress is too much for the typical small business owner to manage.
Yesterday I got yet another reminder of why managed website builder services like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace exist.
I updated the plugins on one of my WordPress sites and POOF! The site broke. Completely. You couldn’t access it. I couldn’t even access the WP-Admin to turn off the plugins to troubleshoot it.
With a bit of help from GoDaddy, I was able to FTP to the site and remove the plugins folder to diagnose the issue.
But here’s the thing: talk to the average small business owner about updating plugins or FTP’ing into their site and they’ll lose you.
That’s why site builders exist. Anyone can create a site using them. They don’t have to worry about updating plugins and breaking their site. Security is handled behind the scenes.
Using a site builder instead of WordPress comes with drawbacks but it’s a huge market for a good reason.
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This stolen domain lawsuit just got messier
First the judge questioned trademarks. Now a company says it bought one of the domains.
Yoshiki Okada’s lawsuit to recover valuable domain names he says were stolen from him is getting messier.
Okada filed an in rem lawsuit late last year to recover the domain names eol.com, fde.com, jol.com, nnn.com, olp.com, tang.com, wok.com, wtv.com, and zhang.com.
No one showed up to defend the domain names but the judge questioned if this was really a case that should have been filed as a cybersquatting claim. Were the domains really used in commerce? Did Okada have trademark rights? Tang.com seemed to be a trigger since it’s also a well-known trademark owned by a food company.
As if that wasn’t a big enough wrench in the lawsuit, now a company has raised its hand and said that it bought OLP.com last year to rebrand its business (pdf).
OneLoanPlace.com rebranded as OLP.com after acquiring the domain name. It finally got ready to relaunch its business on the OLP.com domain this year, only to find out it was locked due to the lawsuit.
The company says it bought the domain on January 23, 2018. In Okada’s suit, he said the domain was stolen on or about January 29, 2018.
It’s worth noting that the loan company reached out to buy the domain through a broker. Based on its legal filing, it was not approached by someone who could have been the thief.
OLP.com wants to defend the domain name in the lawsuit. So this relatively simple case is now becoming much more complicated.
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19 end user sales…including one to Uniregistry
A domain name registrar was an end user this week.
It’s not often that you see a domain name registrar acquire a domain name as an end user. But that happened this week as Uniregistry (or is it now Uni?) bought the domain name UniEmail.com at Sedo.
This was one of 19 end user sales I uncovered at Sedo for the past week.
One that I didn’t include because I don’t know the buyer is Club.app. It sold for just $2,000, which sets a value point for .app domains.
Here’s the list of end user sales from the past week. You can view previous lists like this here.
Lootjes.nl €29,500 – Forwards to Lootjestrekken.nl. This site lets you set up gift exchanges by pulling straws. It randomizes who your gift recipient is.
Capiche.com – A fun name but it reminds me of the spelling challenges that Gazoontite experienced back in the day. I’m not sure who bought it but the domain resolves to a page with a Capiche logo.
AutoPiter.com €9,900 – Forwards to AutoPiter.ru, a Russian auto and motorcycle parts dealer.
Chacon.com €9,850 – Chacon sells smart home goods and cameras at Chacon.be. It now has the .com to match its country code domain. I think it got a good deal on this name.
InversorGlobal.com $6,000 – This domain was purchased by Inversor Global, a Spanish Investment Firm that currently uses IGDigital.com as its main website.
Lyst.ch and Lyst.at €5,500 each – Lyst Ltd is an online fashion store that uses the domain name Lyst.com.
OmniGym.com $5,465 – Omnigym (Puuha Sports Oy) produces home fitness and gym equipment out of Finland.
CloudTechSolutions.com $4,999 – Cloud Technology Solutions is a Google Cloud Premier Partner that provides G Suite and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) solutions. The domain forwards to CloudSolutions.co.uk.
EYUP.com $3,900 – David Richards of the David and Jane Richards Family Foundation, a charitable organization whose goal is to educate, empower and improve the lives of children. For now, the domain forwards to the foundation’s website at djrff.org.
QAD.nl €2,900 – Forwards to QAD.com, an integrated business software company for manufacturing companies. The company now owns the Dutch ccTLD.
WER.io $2,800 – A new digital marketing agency whose claim is to connect the physical store aspect of businesses with digital channels, enabling an immersive, spatial computing environment and direct marketing channel between brands and consumers at the local store and online.
ChefsResource.com $2,500 – This website is still being developed but has the message posted, “We are trusted by millions of home cooks as the authority for best recipes, cooking tips, and much more”. Might be some hyperbole there since it’s a fresh install of WordPress.
LQ.be €2,200 – Lemmis Q is a French Consultancy Firm that helps organizations through structural changes using their own readiness scan based on the “Six batteries of change”. Its website is LemmisQ.com.
Viak.com – $3,500 Viak is an organization trying to make smartphones more affordable.
UniEmail.com $3,000 – Domain name registrar Uni (aka Uniregistry) bought this domain.
Arcade.one $3,000- This new site appears to be for games and has a cool coming soon page.
George.pro – €2,019 Erste Group’s George Labs, which has a banking solution called George.
RenewalTherapy.org $2,000 – Forwards to RenewalCounselling.com – an individual counseling and psychotherapy services provider.
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.NZ namespace gets suspension powers after Christchurch mosque shootings
New powers will help remove access to certain content.
InternetNZ has enacted an interim policy change in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.
The organization has granted Domain Name Commission (the operator of New Zealand’s .NZ) the ability to take action against domain names after extraordinary events.
Domain Name Commission’s added powers will be limited to suspending, temporarily transferring or locking a domain name. All of these actions can easily be reversed if necessary.
The idea is to give the .NZ namespace’s manager the ability to make it harder to access objectionable content such as videos of the shooting.
InternetNZ notes that:
Under this interim policy change, the Commission’s actions will need to be proportionate to the harm in question, are temporary, must be made public as soon as possible and publicly reported.
More on InternetNZ’s decision is here.
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AirPods and the Anticipatory Web
Wireless earbuds connected to assistants speed up the Anticipatory Web.
Satisfaction from a wireless earbud in the movie Her.
The 2013 movie Her was creepy. The storyline is that a man falls in love with an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. He interacts with her in many ways including a wireless earpiece in his ear.
While I don’t think we’ll be falling in love with operating systems anytime soon, I’m certainly noticing a lot more people walking around with ever-present earbuds in their ears. Wireless headsets have been around for ages but Apple is making them ubiquitous by removing headphone jacks from its phones and selling AirPods.
Wireless earbuds will help usher in the era of the Anticipatory Web. It starts with a web interface that isn’t visual. In this cases its auditory. It’s like the Amazon Echo or Google Home but it’s always in your ear.
Voice is one thing, but the bigger shift will be when your personal assistant baked into the wireless earpiece starts anticipating your needs.
It’s 7 pm on a weeknight.
“I see that you are walking in downtown Austin. Would you like to find available restaurant reservations?”
It’s the week before Mother’s Day.
“Did you remember to send flowers to Mom? I can send her a dozen roses for $30. Say yes to confirm.”
In these examples, the voice assistant anticipated a search you might do in the future and did it for you. That’s one less search you will perform on the visual web.
This matters when it comes to search. It matters when it comes to domain names.
We’re witnessing a big battle for control of assistants. Soon, you’ll be able to choose wireless earbuds that work with Alexa, Google and many other systems. Unfortunately, these assistants are still fairly closed systems. This means the future of the web could run through one of these companies and it could lose its openness.
While you might not fall in love with your operating system, you might love how she anticipates your needs.
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Real estate and domain name parallels
We just sold our home and it made me think a lot about the domain name market.
We recently sold our home in Austin. I can’t help but compare the residential real estate sales process to domain names.
Let’s start with observations about the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The idea is that there is a central repository for home data — both for sale and actual sales prices.
There’s a parallel between MLS and what Afternic and Sedo offer. If you list your home in MLS it is instantly searchable to all MLS subscribers in the area and is cross-posted to many real estate websites like Zillow and Trulia. (I realize that syndication is negotiated by each local MLS and is not done in all areas.)
Afternic created DLS and Sedo created MLS modeled off of this. The LS in both of these names — and the full MLS in Sedo’s! — are not by accident. If you list your domains with these services they will be promoted across dozens of websites. It gets the domain in front of more domain searchers.
These syndicated systems have done wonders for sell-through rates in the domain name industry.
My second thought about MLS is what it says about data. People who have access to MLS data have an advantage. It depends on where you live, but in Austin, the actual sales prices are not public. Only MLS subscribers (licensed real estate agents) have access to this data. They want to keep it this way because it gives them an advantage and a reason for people to hire them.
Imagine if only domain brokers got access to sales data!
In some ways, this is already the case in the domain business. While Sedo releases most of its data, GoDaddy’s Afternic doesn’t. This means GoDaddy has an advantage when it comes to acquiring domain portfolios and understanding their value.
(Side note: GoDaddy provides some of this sales data when you use its appraisal tool. Rather than just griping about GoDaddy’s appraisal values, domainers should understand how they can leverage this tool.)
In Austin, the county appraisers don’t get access to MLS sales data, which is part of the reason their appraisals for property tax rarely align with reality. They’re working from a limited set of data.
In the case of Afternic, even it sees only a small slice of data. So much happens “off market” in the domain industry. Most deals are private.
In the case of our home, we never went on MLS. This means the sales price won’t make it to MLS and agents won’t know how much it sold for. It turns out that a fairly large percentage of home sales in certain segments are done “off-market”.
This draws another parallel: access to deal flow. You need to network in order to get access to a lot of domain inventory, just like you need to do to get access to pre-market home inventory.
Now, on to a controversial part of residential real estate: the 6% commission. I cringed when I saw how much we paid in commissions on our closing statement.
But I’m a firm believer that you hire an expert. Just like how Carrot founder Trevor Mauch said he would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars plus time by hiring an expert earlier, there’s value in professional real estate agents. (Of course, you need to hire a good one. There are a lot of bad ones out there.)
That said, a big advantage that agents have is data. This is eroding and many companies are stepping in to try to break up this model. Some are just lower fee providers such as RedFin. But OpenDoor is upending the entire model in lower price ranges.
Finally, saving the best parallel for last: did you know there’s “house sniping” in real estate? Much like how we grab domains the moment they expire based on our own metrics, some of the large private equity home buyers have systems set up to make offers on homes the moment they hit the MLS if they meet their requirements.
Crazy stuff.
© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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The .Inc Model – DNW Podcast #232
$2,500 for a domain registration?
There are many models for new top level domains: inexpensive and high volume, moderately priced, and then insanely expensive. This week we talk with one of the latter: .Inc. Shayan Rostam explains the pricing decision and business model. You’ll learn a lot.
Also: .Music (finally!), Enom’s big move, GoDaddy’s .coms, Sheryl Sandberg leans in too far, NHL playoffs and more.
This week’s sponsor: DNAcademy. Use code DNW for $50 off.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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Australia domain administrator denies domain investing ban
Domainers get a victory in Australia.
Domainers can keep investing Down Under.
Australian domain name registry manager auDA will continue to permit domain investing in the .AU namespace.
The decision comes after its Policy Review Panel suggested a change that would effectively halt domain investing.
Current rules prohibit registering a domain for the “sole purpose” of selling or transferring it to another entity. The proposal would have changed that to the “primary purpose”, effectively closing a loophole.
But auDA management didn’t follow the suggestion.
It said that the provision would target domain investors:
The warehousing prohibition appears to disproportionately target domain investors as the licence portfolios or holdings of trademark and brand owners will be excluded under the PRP proposal. This proposal elevates the rights of trademark and other intellectual property owners over other licence holders in the .au domain, which may give rise to issues of market power and anti-competitive practices. Management believes that further information is required to assess whether the net benefit to the community of prohibiting warehousing in respect of a class of registrants outweighs the competition issues. For these reasons Management believes that there should be no change to the existing policy position.
It also noted:
The proposed test for determining whether a registrant has contravened the resale and warehousing prohibition will increase compliance costs for registrants and administration, monitoring and enforcement costs for auDA. These costs may be disproportionate to the risk or severity of the harm to the community from warehousing and the cost of a licence in the .au domain.
Internet Commerce Association was among the groups opposed to the proposal. I imagine that Afilias, which took over backend operations for .AU last year, also rallied the troops.
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3 domains still elude Major League Baseball
Only three teams don’t have their matching domain name.
MLB is only missing three team domain names.
It’s April and that means Major League Baseball is in full swing.
Of all the major sports leagues, MLB has been the most aggressive acquirer of domain names that match team names. In fact, the league is only missing three domain names at this point:
- Giants.com – MLB isn’t going to get this domain for San Francisco. It’s owned by the NFL Giants.
- Rays.com – Rays is a popular Seattle seafood restaurant. I wonder how much the domain is worth to them?
- Twins.com – D&D Miller in California owns the domain. This one seems like the most obtainable. It’s not being used for a web presence.
Major League Baseball also owns the .MLB top level domain. Despite a lot of talk, only two .MLB domains are indexed in Google: cubs.mlb (which forwards to MLB.com) and nic.mlb.
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Constantine Roussos’ DotMusic wins .Music domain
Roussos beats Amazon, Google and others to win control of .Music.
The long battle for control of the .music top level domain name is owner.
Yesterday, DotMusic founder Constantine Roussos confirmed this his organization was the winning bidder in a private settlement for the extension:
Excited to announce that after more than a decade, DotMusic has prevailed and will be the .MUSIC registry
Categories: Domains
Tambour Ltd filed complaint that was “bound to fail”
Paint company files abusive cybersquatting complaint.
An Israeli paint company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Tambour.com. Tambour is a dictionary word in French that means ‘drum’.
Tambour Ltd uses the domain name Tambour.co.il.
The paint company reached out to the owner of the domain name and the registrant indicated he’d sell the domain name for $20,000. The valuation was based on the dictionary meaning of the word.
According to the written decision by the three-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel, the Complainant also indicated in its inquiry to the registrant that it had previously owned the domain. The respondent challenges this assertion.
The panel wrote:
…Had the Complainant acted diligently, it would have taken into account the lack of supporting evidence and the obvious potential defense that “tambour” is a dictionary word when deciding whether to file a complaint under the Policy against the Respondent. The Complainant is represented by counsel who must be taken to have studied to some degree the basic elements of the WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, and this is probably true since the Complaint includes references to this Overview. The Complainant’s counsel must have understood that the Complaint was bound to fail given the absence of any evidence to indicate bad faith on the part of the Respondent, but the Complainant was nevertheless filed after the unsuccessful attempt of the Complainant to acquire the disputed domain name.
Preminger & Co represented the Complainant. John Berryhill represented the domain owner.
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Coinbase successfully defends domain name in cybersquatting dispute
A French payments firm took issue with the cryptocurrency trading platform registering CB.markets.
Coinbase defended its domain CB.markets in a dispute brought by a French payments firm.
Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has successfully defended the domain name CB.markets in a cybersquatting dispute.
French payments company Groupement des cartes bancaires filed the complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) at World Intellectual Property Organization.
The payments company offers services under the CB mark.
However, CB is clearly short for Coinbase and it makes sense for the company to register the domain. The WIPO panelist found that Coinbase had a legitimate interest in the domain name and did not register it in bad faith.
Panelist Warwick Rothnie declined to find that the case was reverse domain name hijacking, however. He noted that Coinbase was not publicly using the domain name. There was also a “for sale” message on the Whois record at DomainTools for the domain that leads to Sedo.
Coinbase is the initial registrant of the domain name. So this means Sedo’s listing was either generated in partnership with the .markets registry or someone added the domain to Sedo that didn’t own it.
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.Com slips at GoDaddy
Expirations outpaced new registrations at GoDaddy in December.
ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers December 2018.
Something interesting happened in December: GoDaddy’s .com domains under management (DUMs) dropped. I’ve tracked monthly numbers for a long time and don’t recall this happening in recent history.
The drop isn’t due to a large outbound transfer. In fact, GoDaddy’s net transfer loss was less than 10,000. It’s just that more .com names expired at GoDaddy than it got in new registrations.
Note that this only includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. It doesn’t include GoDaddy’s smaller registrars and the ones it picked up in the Host Europe Group acquisition.
Now, to the numbers. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.
1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 824,821 (865,438 in November)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 207,506 (152,143)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 169,910 (312,227)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 155,809 (175,148)
4. NameCheap Inc. 129,114 (157,607)
8. Web.com++ 101,629 (97,702)
6. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 94,849 (130,713)
7. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 91,577 (123,087)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,799 (88,236)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 60,004 (66,501)
Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of November 2018.
1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,583,119 (12,659,835)
3. Endurance+ 7,124,825 (7,179,580)
4. Web.com++ 6,726,237 (6,732,478)
5. Alibaba 6,248,273 (6,192,801)
6. United Internet^ 5,640,149 (5,666,856)
7. Namecheap 4,535,855 (4,515,221)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,987,431 (2,792,514)
9. Google 2,106,955 (2,057,844)
10. GMO 1,953,479 (1,964,580)
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.
* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you
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Google adds Discover data to Search Console
Website owners can now see how much traffic they get from Discover.
Google has added data from Google Discover to its Search Console. This means website owners can now see how much traffic they are getting from Discover.
Discover is essentially “searchless” traffic from Google. It shows content to people in the Google app, on Google.com’s mobile home page and on Pixel phones.
Much like search, the goal is to show content to people who will find it relevant. By adding the data to Google Search Console, site owners can now see which of their content is getting the most traffic and the highest click-through rates from Discover. This should help them produce more successful content.
For example, my story about Alpnames shutting down last month had over 5,000 Google Discover clicks on roughly 53,000 impressions.
Based on the data in my account and Google’s stated goal of Discover, it seems that content that gets the most clicks leads to more impressions. I suspect Google is also monitoring interaction with the content much as it does with clicks in search results.
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18 end user domain name sales up to £50,000
A French fishing magazine, several tech and engineering firms and a British furniture company bought domain names last week.
Sedo had some nice end user domain name sales over the past week. The top sale of FusionBank.com is still in escrow but I wonder if the buyer is the bank that uses Fusion.bank for its website.
Also, note the two different data brands that bought domains. One pays people to collect local data and the other compensates people for their personal data.
Here’s the list of end user sales from the past week. You can view previous lists like this here.
FusionBank.com £50,000 – The domain name is still in escrow but it’s clear that this is an end user purchase. Perhaps it’s the same bank that uses Fusion.bank for its domain name? This was the top sale of the week and took place through SedoMLS.
ComScope.com €42,500 – This is the second place overall sale for last week and it is forwarding to CommScope.com, a technology company focused on infrastructure, products and communication solutions. This purchase is likely to capture type-in error traffic since this domain is their exact name minus one “M”.
Peche.com €30,000 – An online French fishing magazine. It also happens to be the name of one of my favorite restaurants in Austin. Check it out next time you’re in town.
T.win $22,500 – This one-letter domain hack in a new TLD forwards to Twin.com, an online gaming site. This was also the top “other” sale.
Hlio.com $21,850 – Forwards to HeliosTechnologies.com, formerly known as Sun Hydraulics, a global tech firm that develops and manufactures hydraulic and electronic control solutions. Hilo is a shorter and more concise domain.
Skribe.com $10,000 – Skribe looks like it will be a sort of crowdsourced data collection platform. People get paid to collect local data.
UBDI.com $6,000 – Another data play…UBDI compensates people for the data that they produce. This is in response to companies making money from personal data.
Aviti.com $6,000 – Forwards to DSMI.fr, an IT hardware and services provider in France, servicing mid and large size companies since 2011. It’s possible that this domain is for a hosting client.
OmniBiz.com $5,500 – A lead generation and business promotional platform.
AtTheHelm.com $4,000 – Hydeline Furniture, a furniture brand out of the UK. Maybe this domain will be for a new campaign or a for a specific line of furniture.
SASIL.com $3,000 – Forwards to SASIL.org which stands for the Standardization Association of Sinitic Languages and Han Characters. This is a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages consisting of the various local languages and dialects whose speakers share Chinese literacy as their standard language.
Mitten-im-Leben.de €3,000 – “Mitten im Leben” means “in the midst of life”. This domain forwards to Herder.de, the website for a German publishing company whose materials are educational resources for teachers covering the topics of religion, politics, history, philosophy and more.
Wilmaa.ch €2,990 – Forwards to Wilmaa.com, a streaming television provider and app offering 150 TV channels live and for free throughout Switzerland. Channels are available in German, English, French and Italian. They now own the Swiss ccTLD for their website.
Tucarroganga.com $2,798 – Forwards to Tucarroganga.net – an online trading forum for cars in Spanish.
Jaki.co.uk €2,795 – Women’s fashion store Jaki based in London.
Apsan.com $2,100 – Purchased by Apsan Law Offices, LLC, immigration attorneys out of New York, NY and Newark, NJ. They currently use ApsanLaw.com for their main web address.
GEA.be €2,000 – Forwards to GEA.com, the main website for GEA, an engineering and technology supplier for food processing and other industries. The global group specializes in machinery, plants, as well as process technology and components. They now own the Belgium ccTLD of their domain.
PaulValentine.kr $2,000 – Forwards to Paul-Valentine.com, this watch and accessory brand has been buying up several variations of the brand’s domains over the last few months and now own the Korean domain.
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Reverse domain name hijacking over ActiveOwnership.com
Company filed UDRP after failing to purchase domain name.
A Luxembourg company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name ActiveOwnership.com.
Active Ownership Capital S.à.rl filed the cybersquatting case with World Intellectual Property Organization. The company uses the Luxembourg country code domain name ActiveOwnership.lu, so it’s not surprising that it wants to own the .com equivalent.
The company reached out to the domain owner and made offers of up to €6,000. It then filed the UDRP after the purchase attempts failed.
Active Capital started doing business in 2015 and the domain name was registered in 2010. This means that the domain owner could not have registered the domain name in bad faith the target the non-existent Complainant.
The panel found that Active Ownership Capital S.à.rl filed the complaint in abuse of the UDRP because it did not address the obvious issue of the registration dates and because it mischaracterized actions of the domain owner.
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T-Mobile gets defensive for TVision
Company registers hundreds of domains for new over-the-top service.
T-mobile registered hundreds of domains in advance of its TVision launch. Photo courtesy TMobile.
T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) launches its over-the-top television service TVision this Sunday in select markets.
In preparation for the launch, T-Mobile registered over 200 domain names as defensive registrations to keep them out the hands of detractors and cybersquatters. And that’s in .com alone!
The defensive registrations run the gamut.
- Typos such as T-ision.com and T-viison.com
- Negatives such as T-MobileTVSucks.com and F*ckT-Vision.com
- Promotional domains including TVisionReward.com and TvisionSales.com
- Protective domains for the inevitable lawsuits such as TVisionClassAction.com and T-VisionLawsuit.com
It’s common for brands to register a lot of protective domain names when launching a major product or new brand. The exercise can be one in futility; with over 1,000 top level domains and endless permutations of defensive domains, it’s impossible to register every possible domain.
Here’s a full list of the domains I discovered. I’m sure there are many more.
Tvision Domains t-ision.com t-ivsion.com t-mobiletvsucks.com t-viion.com t-viison.com t-visin.com t-visino.com t-visionaccount.com t-visionaccounts.com t-visionaction.com t-visionactions.com t-visionapp.com t-visionappeal.com t-visionappeals.com t-visionapps.com t-visionblows.com t-visionbyt-mobile.com t-visionbytmobile.com t-visioncare.com t-visionclassaction.com t-visionclassactions.com t-visioncomplaint.com t-visioncomplaintcenter.com t-visioncomplaints.com t-visionconsumer.com t-visionconsumers.com t-visioncourtaction.com t-visioncourtactions.com t-visioncourtcase.com t-visioncourtcases.com t-visioncustomercare.com t-visiondealer.com t-visiondealers.com t-visiondispute.com t-visiondisputes.com t-visiondistribution.com t-visiondistributor.com t-visiondistributors.com t-visiondistrictcourt.com t-visiondistrictcourtaction.com t-visiondistrictcourtactions.com t-visiondownload.com t-visiondownloads.com t-visionfail.com t-visionfails.com t-visionfranchise.com t-visionfranchises.com t-visiongear.com t-visionhelp.com t-visionhomesucks.com t-visionlawsuit.com t-visionlawyer.com t-visionlawyers.com t-visionlitigation.com t-visionmerch.com t-visionmerchandise.com t-visionmyaccount.com t-visionnow.com t-visionorder.com t-visionorders.com t-visionpay.com t-visionpayments.com t-visionplaintiff.com t-visionplaintiffs.com t-visionplan.com t-visionplans.com t-visionreseller.com t-visionresellers.com t-visionretailer.com t-visionretailers.com t-visionreturn.com t-visionreturns.com t-visionreview.com t-visionreviews.com t-visionstinks.com t-visionstore.com t-visionstores.com t-visionstuff.com t-visionsuck.com t-visionsucks.com t-visionsuit.com t-visionsuits.com t-visionsupport.com t-visiontech.com t-visiontechsupport.com t-visiontv.com t-visionwholesale.com t-visoin.com t-vison.com t-vsiion.com t-vsion.com tivsion.com tmobiletvsucks.com tv-ision.com tviion.com tviison.com tvisin.com tvisino.com tvisionaccount.com tvisionaccounts.com tvisionaction.com tvisionactions.com tvisionapp.com tvisionappeal.com tvisionappeals.com tvisionapps.com tvisionblackfriday.com tvisionblows.com tvisionbytmobile.com tvisioncare.com tvisionclassaction.com tvisionclassactions.com tvisioncom.com tvisioncomplaint.com tvisioncomplaintcenter.com tvisioncomplaints.com tvisionconsumer.com tvisionconsumers.com tvisioncourtaction.com tvisioncourtactions.com tvisioncourtcase.com tvisioncourtcases.com tvisioncustomercare.com tvisiondeal.com tvisiondealer.com tvisiondealers.com tvisiondeals.com tvisiondispute.com tvisiondisputes.com tvisiondistribution.com tvisiondistributor.com tvisiondistributors.com tvisiondistrictcourt.com tvisiondistrictcourtaction.com tvisiondistrictcourtactions.com tvisiondownload.com tvisiondownloads.com tvisionfail.com tvisionfails.com tvisionfranchise.com tvisionfranchises.com tvisionfree.com tvisiongear.com tvisionhelp.com tvisionhomesucks.com tvisionlawsuit.com tvisionlawyer.com tvisionlawyers.com tvisionlitigation.com tvisionmerch.com tvisionmerchandise.com tvisionmovie.com tvisionmovies.com tvisionmyaccount.com tvisionnews.com tvisionnow.com tvisionoffer.com tvisionoffers.com tvisionorder.com tvisionorders.com tvisionpay.com tvisionpayments.com tvisionplaintiff.com tvisionplaintiffs.com tvisionplan.com tvisionplans.com tvisionpress.com tvisionpromos.com tvisionpromotion.com tvisionpromotions.com tvisionrebate.com tvisionrebates.com tvisionreseller.com tvisionresellers.com tvisionretailer.com tvisionretailers.com tvisionreturn.com tvisionreturns.com tvisionreview.com tvisionreviews.com tvisionreward.com tvisionrewards.com tvisionsale.com tvisionsales.com tvisionservices.com tvisionspecial.com tvisionspecials.com tvisionstinks.com tvisionstores.com tvisionstuff.com tvisionsuck.com tvisionsucks.com tvisionsuit.com tvisionsuits.com tvisionsupport.com tvisiontech.com tvisiontechsupport.com tvisiontv.com tvisionvideo.com tvisionvideos.com tvisionwholesale.com tvisoin.com tvsiion.com freetvision.com fuckt-mobiletv.com fuckt-vision.com fuckt-visionhome.com fucktmobiletv.com fucktvision.com fucktvisionhome.com buytvision.com© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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9 NHL teams own their matching domain
As we head into the playoffs, these teams have their matching domain name.
The National Hockey League playoffs start this week. I think the energy of the NHL playoffs is more exciting than any major sport, and there’s nothing more exciting in sport than sudden death overtime in the NHL playoffs.
Just for fun this afternoon, I ran the NHL teams through a Whois and website check to see which teams own their exact match domain name. It appears that nine teams have their matching domain. Four of these (denoted by *) have masked Whois records so I’m making an assumption based on them forwarding to the team’s site on NHL.com.
Teams that own their domain name:
- Hurricanes.com (Carolina)
- Senators.com (Ottawa)
- Blackhawks.com (Chicago) – obtained via UDRP last year
- BlueJackets.com (Columbus)*
- Sabres.com (Buffalo)*
- Canadiens.com (Montreal)
- Canucks.com (Vancouver)
- MapleLeafs.com* (Toronto)
- Wild.com* (Minnesota)
Some NHL teams have the same name as teams in other sports. Three teams’ matching domains are owned by the MLB, NFL and NBA.
- Rangers.com (New York) – Major League Baseball for the Texas Rangers
- Islanders.com (New York) – Domain investor Michael Castello
- Flyers.com (Philadelphia) – Ice House Sportscards in Pennsylvania. It’s a site about the Flyers.
- Bruins.com (Boston) – GoDaddy’s NameFind. The domain has a minimum offer of $65,000.
- Panthers.com (Florida) – National Football League for the Carolina Panthers
- Ducks.com (Anaheim) – Bass Pro Outdoors
- Flames.com (Calgary) – GoDaddy’s NameFind with a minimum offer of $65,000.
- Oilers.com (Edmonton) – GoDaddy’s NameFind. Buy now of $30,000.
- Kings.com (L.A.) – National Basketball League for the Sacramento Kings
- Blues.com (St. Louis) – Blues Wireless acquired the domain this year.
- Devils.com (New Jersey) – Listed for sale
- Penguins.com (Pittsburgh) – Parked
- Capitals.com (Washington DC) – Parked
- RedWings.com (Detroit) – Parked
- Lightning.com (Tampa Bay) – Salesforce for its “Lightning Experience”
- Stars.com (Dallas) – Parked
- Predators.com (Nashville) – Parked
- Jets.com (Winnipeg) – Private jet company
- Sharks.com (San Jose) – Parked
- GoldenKnights.com (Las Vegas) – Parked
- Coyotes.com (Phoenix) – Forwards to Skybridge.com
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Sheryl Sandberg loses cybersquatting claim over LeanIn.com domain name
Her foundation uses LeanIn.org.
Sheryl Sandberg’s foundation lost a cybersquatting complaint against the domain LeanIn.com.
The Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against the domain name LeanIn.com. The organization filed the case with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
The Facebook Chief Operating Officer is well-known for her TED Talk and book called Lean In. Her foundation has a subsidiary called LeanIn.Org LLC.
The domain owner, Hecham Ghazal, had a business called LeanIn Inc. that acquired the domain name in July 2010. This was after Sandberg registered the domain name LeanIn.org but before her TED talk and before the book was published.
LeanIn Inc. was later dissolved but the company’s owner retained the domain name.
The foundation argued that the domain name owner acquired the domain in 2015, but the owner provided evidence of his 2010 acquisition of the domain for his business.
WIPO panelist John Swinson noted that the foundation provided no evidence of trademark rights predating Ghazel’s acquisition of the domain name. He wrote:
The Complainant has not provided any evidence, nor has it even attempted to make any argument, as to why the Respondent knew or should have known of the Complainant or its future business operations in July 2010.
The foundation, therefore, could not show that the domain was registered in bad faith and it lost the case.
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