Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

“UK’s Leading Trade Mark Service” loses cybersquatting complaint.

Oh, it’s delicious.

Trade Mark Direct Ltd of London has lost a cybersquatting complaint filed under the .au Dispute Resolution Policy for the domain name TrademarkDirect.com.au.

The irony of the Trade Mark Direct’s utter failure to provide sufficient evidence in the case was not lost on the panel, which wrote:

It is clear that the disputed domain name is identical to the trade mark which is alleged by the Complaint. However, the Complaint (remarkably for a Complaint purporting to offer advisory services in relation to intellectual property) contains only an extract of the wording of the relevant trade mark with no further evidence of the claimed registration, that it is the Complainant itself that has rights in the trade mark, the date of registration, or evidence of any prior common law trade mark rights

In fact, Trade Mark Direct scored a rare trifecta loss, failing to convince the panel that it proved any of the three elements required under the .au policy.

The company’s web site bills it as “The UK’s Leading Trade Mark Service”.

That expertise apparently doesn’t extend to domain name disputes.

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Upgrades to Domain Manager make it easier to complete common tasks.

GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, has released a new Domain Manager for managing domain names held at the registrar.

Compared to other registrars, GoDaddy’s system has always been a bit bloated. The new interface is a step in the right direction.

Whereas before it took multiple clicks and pageviews to change a nameserver, you can now do it from the main Domain Manager screen:

You can also change auto renew and lock status in-line from the main Domain Manager page..

A new search function allows you to quickly find a subset of your domain names and apply bulk actions to those domains:

(Note: the default search is “begins with”. To see all domains that include the keyword you need to click the icon for advanced search.)

Although it’s no longer necessary to perform most actions, if you do click on a single domain name to manage it, the single domain page is greatly improved:

The enhancements will make managing a large portfolio at GoDaddy.com much easier.

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No one has ultimately prevailed after filing a UDRP against Name Administration.

Before you filed a UDRP, you’d think you’d google the domain name’s owner to learn more.

Yet time after time I see people file long shot UDRP complaints against Frank Schilling’s Name Administration.

Today’s winner is the company that filed against Klipz.com.

Since the case was filed at National Arbitration Forum, we don’t yet know who the complainant is.

There’s one registered trademark filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “Klipz”. That trademark was filed in 2010 on an intent-to-use basis. Yet Name Administration has owned the domain name Klipz.com for a long time. The oldest whois record at DomainTools shows he has owned it since at least 2006. The domain was last registered in 2004.

I don’t know for sure if the owner of the U.S. trademark is the filer, so I’ll leave their name out if it…for now.

But let me help others who might be thinking of filing a UDRP against Name Administration:

I get it. You really want that domain, and Name Administration doesn’t let its names go for cheap. But filing a UDRP is just wasting your money and time.

If Name Administration somehow let a bona fide trademark name through, it will quickly hand the domain over upon your request. So if it hasn’t done that, you probably don’t have much of a case. In fact, 30 of the 31 complaints ever filed against Name Administration have lost. And do you know what happened to that 1 out of 31? They found themselves fighting a lawsuit in Grand Cayman.

The price of the domain will surely go up after you lose.

The message is this: filing a UDRP against Name Administration won’t work. It’s a waste of time.

You’re welcome.

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Discounted tickets available through tomorrow.

The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is expensive, and everyone has their opinion about whether it’s worth it or not.

But there’s one thing that’s not debatable: if you know you’re going to go, buy your ticket early.

Until tomorrow afternoon you can get a ticket to the October show in Fort Lauderdale for $995. The price will go up fairly rapidly, with a full conference pass costing you nearly $2,000 if you wait until the last minute.

It makes sense for the show’s organizers to offer discounted prices to early birds. It encourages attendees to sign up early, which helps the organizers learn how many people will come and plan accordingly. That also helps them market the event to sponsors.

It takes a lot of cash to put on these shows, and not just the week of the event. Getting some of it early doesn’t hurt.

I have no idea how much Rick and Howard make from TRAFFIC shows. Five or so years ago they probably made a mint thanks to the domain auctions and sponsorships. These days the auction is no longer a big money maker and sponsors are thinning out a bit. In fact, at the Vegas show last week, Rick and Howard said they were $75,000 in the hole the week before the event. They thought they had closed the gap by the time the show started.

There’s a lot of risk involved at organizers are on the hook to the hotel regardless of how many people show up. Early bird tickets are a win-win.

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A disclaimer on a domain offer page could help you defend against a UDRP.

There was a panel on domain name law and the UDRP during last week’s TRAFFIC conference.

Bill Sweetman of Name Ninja provided some tips on how to mitigate the risk of losing a domain in a UDRP. One suggestion was to add a disclaimer to a domain offer page that says the submitter claims no legal right to the domain it’s making an offer on.

Nat Cohen of Telepathy was also on the panel.

Fast forward a few days and there’s a UDRP case involving Nat Cohen in which he put up that exact defense: that the complainant had expressly agreed to it had no legal right to the domain when it submitted two offers for it.

Here’s part of Telepathy’s defense for LGG.com:

In both cases the Complainant disclaimed legal rights to the Disputed Domain by confirming the following statement that accompanied both offers:

“By submitting this offer, I confirm that neither I, nor my organization, claims a legal right to the registration of the domain listed above. If I am inquiring on behalf of another entity, I confirm that this entity does not claim a legal right to the registration of the domain listed above and that I am authorized by such entity to make this representation.”

The offers were made on SecuredOffers.com.

Now, there were a lot of reasons Telepathy successfully defended the LGG.com domain name. The case was a joke.

But in a more marginal case, this disclaimer may have been helpful. That said, I haven’t seen a UDRP panel make a ruling based on such a disclaimer. I have no idea what sort of legal weight it carries.

It should be common sense to a panel that if a company offers $10,000 for a domain name, it must feel that the domain owner has rights to it. But common sense doesn’t always prevail.

What do you think? Could a disclaimer like this be helpful?

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Company tries to make claim to LGG.com 15 years after it’s registered.

Telepathy, the domain name company run by domain investor Nat Cohen, has successfully defended his domain name LGG.com in a UDRP.

The complaint was brought by Valio Ltd, a Finnish dairy company and was filed with Czech Arbitration Court.

If you’re not familiar with Telepathy, it owns the largest portfolio of three letter .com domain names in the world, with over 1,000 of them.

Cohen also helps keep the database of reverse domain name hijacking cases at RDNH.com. Even though he won the LGG.com case, panelists Alan Limbury, David Taylor, and Thomas Hoeren shirked their responsibility to consider Telepathy’s claims of RDNH.

You can be excused if you do a couple face palms while reading Valio’s claims.

The purpose of the use and registration of the disputed domain name has been, inter alia, to prevent Valio, the legitimate owner of LGG trademark, from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name as well as to sell the disputed domain name to Valio.

Right. So someone who has 1,000 three letter .com domains only registered this particular one because it saw that a Finnish dairy group used the acronym LGG for some of its products. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered to register the domain.

The LGG trademark was launched by Valio in the United States during the year 1998. The Respondent registered the disputed domain name lgg.com exactly in 1998. The aforementioned situation is not likely to be a sole coincidence.

And all those other three letter domains registered around the same time? Must have been coincidence.

(Cohen pointed out that Valio didn’t provide any proof of offering its products in the U.S. in 1998, let alone prior to the February registration of the domain.)

Oh, and the complainant did not register lgg.fi until 2003. Given that it’s now 15 years after Cohen registered LGG.com, Valio is a bit late to the table.

It gets better. In Cohen’s response:

The Complaint attempts to mislead by stating that “the LGG trademark was launched by Valio in the United States during the year 1998”. At the time of the registration of the Disputed Domain on February 10, 1998, the status of Complainant’s trademark application was that the US Patent and Trademark Office had issued a Final Refusal letter. Complainant therefore had no enforceable trademark rights in the United States when the Disputed Domain was registered.

Valio offered $10,000 for the domain and Telepathy asked for $175,000. It seems like this was a last ditch effort by Valio Ltd to get the domain name cheaply.

There’s another interesting aspect to this case that I’ll write about later.

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Antony Van Couvering explains why it believes private TLD auctions make sense.

Up until last week, it appeared that Top Level Domain Holdings, one of the largest new TLD applicants, would not participate in private auctions for TLDs.

But that changed, and now TLDH/Minds+Machines CEO Antony Van Couvering has published an explanation for the reversal.

It’s worth reading the explanation in its entirety. One of the key reasons for TLDH’s opinion: applicants will exit the auction process with more cash in hand to promote new TLDs than if they give it to ICANN in “last resort” auctions.

Indeed, as a competing applicant told me recently, “Once someone really thinks about the benefits of private auctions, they’d be silly not to participate.”

In a private auction, the losers walk away with most of the cash paid by the winner.

Everyone is running their own calculations, and it’s possible some may believe they’ll come out ahead if they don’t participate. Yet the fact that some companies are participating in private auctions changes the calculus even for those that don’t. Some of these companies may leave the private auction process with more cash (thanks to losing bids) to go to an ICANN auction against a company that sat on the sideline during private auctions.

TLDH said it won’t participate in the current round of auctions because it’s too early.

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Keister has held a number of executive positions with the company.

John Keister, a founder of Marchex, resigned from the company’s board today. (Photo: Marchex.com)

John Keister, a founder of Marchex, resigned his board position today.

Keister was executive vice chairman since May 2010 and was a member of Marchex’ board of directors since its inception in January 2003.

He also served in a number of executive positions for the company, including as president from December 2003 through April 2010 and as chief operating officer from January 2003 until March 2009.

Keister was a co-founder of Go2Net, which later merged with InfoSpace.

An SEC filing states that Keister’s resignation “is not the result of any disagreement with Marchex on any matter relating to Marchex’s operations, policies or practices”.

Marchex is currently in the process of spinning out its domain name business into a new company called Archeo.

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Site with Google Adsense ads still may qualify for “non-commercial”, UDRP panel rules.

SamsungHub.com, started in 2006, now forwards to SammyHub.com.

The owner of SamsungHub.com can keep his domain name, a WIPO panel has ruled in a UDRP brought by tech giant Samsung.

Kunal Gangar began using the domain name in 2006. In 2011 Samsung released an app called SamsungHub, so Gangar registered a new domain – SammyHub.com – and redirected SamsungHub.com to it.

Although Ganger has Google Adsense ads on the SammyHug.com web site (and had them on the SamsungHub.com site), the panel ruled that limited commercial activity on a fan site doesn’t necessarily mean a domain name was commercial in nature.

The panel also noted that it considered the fact that the domain name was registered seven years ago and used extensively since then in coming to its conclusion. In other words, it considered the doctrine of laches.

I find the decision that the site was “non-commercial” a bit odd, given that the site is clearly a commercial site designed to earn advertising revenue. That said, the panel notes that the UDRP was created for clear-cut cases of cybersquatting, and that perhaps a more appropriate venue for Samsung’s claims may be the courts. From that perspective, the panel decided wisely.

When in doubt, throw it out.

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End users including Taser snap up domain names.

Last week’s Sedo end user sales report is late because I was at the TRAFFIC conference last week. Afternic skipped last week and is doubling up on its report this week, so expect a long Afternic report on Wednesday.

IFN.com, the same company that previously bought LiveAgent.co.uk for 1,100 GBP, bought Communicate.co.uk for 10,000 GBP.

UK insurance seller Neilson Financial Services bought InsuranceLine.co.uk for 1,250 GBP.

GED Testing Service LLC, part of Pearson, bought MarchWithUs.com for $1,295.

Investment company Legatum bought GiveAmerica.com for $1,500 and the .net and .org versions for $700 each.

Online gambling company MicroGaming bought TheMPN.com for $1,000. That stands for Microgaming Poker Network (MPN).

La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology paid $5,000 for LJI.org. That’s shorter than its existing LIAI.org domain name.

The owner of luxurywatch.ch paid $820 for Luxury-Watch.com. The company appears to own or lease LuxuryWatch.com as well.

TASER International bought TaserTraining.com for $5,500.

Pathfinder App LLC, which owns PathFinderApp.co, bought PathfinderApp.com for 1,000 EUR.

Kitchen appliance company Bora bought Bora.info for $1,849. It uses Boragmbh.com as its domain; Bora.com has the same owner as Bora-Bora.com and is used as a travel site.

Concierge service company LesConcierges bought 360Concierge.com for $1,250.

Tech consulting firm Phoenix Technologies dropped the hyphen from its domain name, picking up PhoenixTechnologies.com for $3,499.

Automotive internet marketing firm Dealer Online Marketing bought DOM360.com for $2,500.

The New Zealand company that owns ABSdirect.net bought 30seconds.com for 19,400. I wonder if ABS stands for abdominals?

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New TLD applicant issues new shares to raise money, also confirms possibility of participating in private new TLD auctions.

Top Level Domain Holdings Limited, parent company of Minds + Machines, has conditionally raised $10 million.

The company today conditionally placed 110,375,276 new ordinary shares at 6p per share.

The money will be used as additional working capital, with much of it earmarked for settling contention sets.

The press release also confirms what company CEO Antony Van Couvering commented on Domain Name Wire last week — that the company is considering participating in private auctions for top level domains. Private auctions allow the losers to receive some of the money the winning bidder pays. If a new TLD applicant loses an “auction of last resort” with ICANN, it loses all of the money it paid to apply for the new TLD and doesn’t get any of the winning bidder’s payment.

The company previously announced it raised up to $15 million for one (undisclosed) top level domain, in which the funding source will receive participation in revenue from the one domain. The company is seeking similar deals.

The company had £2.418 million in cash and cash equivalents on its books at the end of 2012.

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Nokta’s typical lease is about $100 a month.

When you think of domain leasing, you probably think of big ticket domains that companies couldn’t buy outright so they opted for a lease instead.

But it’s not just expensive domains that people are leasing.

Case in point: Nokta Domains has published a list of the 18 domain names it leased last month. The most expensive monthly lease fee? Just $250. The company leased one domain (Seyahat.net) for just $30 per month. The average lease fee is $106.

Also interesting is that the most of the leased domains are non-English language.

Leasing a domain or offering a monthly payment plan is a creative way to close the gap when a potential buyer can’t afford an upfront payment for your domain.

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Have to submit query twice to get correct result on Verisign’s whois.

Verisign’s whois service for .com and .net is sometimes falsely returning a result of “no match” the initial time you search for a domain name.

For example, if you search for DNW.com on Verisign’s site or via port 43 whois, you’ll get a “no match” result the first time. Click “search” a second time and the correct whois will be returned.

You can see example screenshots on the DomainPunch blog.

I’ve also noticed that the web based whois at VerisignInc.com does not recognize the top level domain you select from the drop down box. If you just type something like “ESPN” and select .com or .net from the drop down, it will not recognize the associated TLD. You must type the actual TLD after the second level domain.

This problem appears to have been happening since at least last night, although some of my searches are working in recent minutes.

[Update: NameCheap is also reporting the problem, and saying it may affect domain availability lookups.]

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Company that applied for seven new TLDs buys a coveted two letter domain name.

UK Financial firm IG Group has acquired the domain name IG.com, which was previously used by a Brazilian search portal.

According to IP Pro The Internet, the company announced the deal to the press, although I can’t locate the actual announcement nor any information about the deal other than the IP Pro article. Even the IP Pro article does not yet appear to be indexed in Google.

Nonetheless, the acquisition is confirmed on IG.com and via whois, which shows the ownership change in March. Archive.org shows that IG put up a placeholder site on the domain back in March as well.

An affiliate of the acquiring company, IG Group Holdings PLC, has applied for seven new top level domain names including .spreadbetting, .forex, .cfd, .trading, .nadex, .markets, and .broker.

I can’t find a financial disclosure from IG regarding the purchase price, but will update this story if it becomes available.

(via DomainArts)

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The domain investor community is in Las Vegas right now. Here’s why this TRAFFIC conference matters.

I’m writing this post from the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where the latest TRAFFIC conference is taking place.

I think this conference “matters” for three key reasons.

1. Without this event, it would be a long time between seeing the domain community.

Webfest was in early February. If TRAFFIC only had its Florida show this year, it would be about 8 months between major U.S. domain conferences. Sure, there are other events throughout the year where you can see a portion of the domain industry. A lot will be at HostingCon next month, a handful come to AdTech, and there are several web industry events. There are also ICANN meetings, although this year’s are in far flung locations for those of us in the U.S.

Going 8 months without a major domain conference is a long time.

2. This week will raise a lot of money for The Water School.

Tonight The Water School will hold a charity event that should raise about $20,000 to help bring clean water to people in developing countries and rural areas. There’s a lot to like about that.

3. It’s the last conference before new TLDs.

By the time the next domain conference happens in October, we (might) start seeing the rollout of new top level domains. This is kind of the calm before the storm. Later this year the domain industry will change. You can argue what it means for .com owners, but one thing that’s clear is that a lot of money and new people will be coming into the industry. That’s good. It’s just different. The people attending domain conferences will likely be quite different 12 months from now.

Follow Domain Name Wire on twitter for updates throughout the show.

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Descriptive nature of domain means registrant not necessarily lacking rights or legitimate interests in domain.

Fling.com, an adult social network that facilitates hookups, has lost a domain name dispute over best-fling-sites.com.

According to Fling.com owner Global Personals, LLC, the registrant of the domain optimized it to show up high in search results when a user searches for the Fling.com site.

The company presented evidence that suggests the respondent was well aware of its site. But the panel agreed with the respondent that “fling” is a descriptive word that can commonly be used for adult hookup sites:

The Panel finds that the word or term “fling” is one which members of the public, including Respondent, may have wish to use on or in connection with adult dating services, or social networking community services more generally. Indeed, the Panel is of the view that they are entitled to do so as long as they do not infringe the particular rights covered by the above trademark registration(s) in accordance with the requirements of the Policy. In this regard, it is relevant to note that Respondent has added to the common descriptor “fling” the words “best” and “sites”. While these words are themselves descriptive, once combined in this way, a term with a quite different meaning emerges – namely a reference to “the best fling sites”. Such reference is both apt and appropriate for use in relation to an entity or website that reviews sites or services aimed at those interested in having a “fling” or in the wider community involved in such affairs.

The panel ruled that the complainant therefore had not proven that the respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in the domain.

Think of it this way. If Home.com was an active web site, should it be able to take down best-home-sites.com through a UDRP?

That’s one of the challenges of using a highly descriptive/generic term.

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Hong Kong based domain name registrar at risk of losing ICANN accreditation.

ICANN has sent a breach notice to AsiaRegister, Inc. for its failure to pay past due accreditation fees.

According to the breach notice sent yesterday, the Hong Kong registrar owes past due accreditation fees of $16,362.64.

ICANN also says the registrar is not linking to ICANN’s Registrant Rights and Responsibilities webpage on AsiaRegister’s website, as required by Section 3.15 of the RAA.

The registrar appears to be fairly small, with just 5,459 .com domain names registered as of the end of January.

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.Lu provides new lock in case of domain dispute.

Country code operators are not required to offer a cybersquatting resolution service, although many adopt some form of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

Luxembourg takes a more hands of approach. But starting next month it will implement a locking option to stop a domain from being transferred while in dispute. The lock has an initial one year period and can be extended.

Here’s how the registry describes it:

The Dispute is valid for an initial period of one year and will expire without further notice. DNS-LU may, however, extend it for an additional period of six months, provided the claimant submits a formal request for this purpose.

In the event that the dispute is solved, the claimant must submit on his own initiative a formal trade request to any .lu registrar of his choice. This to ensure the proper transfer of ownership. The trade request will be checked and validated manually by DNS-LU subject to the reception of documents proving the resolution of the dispute in favor of the claimant.

In case of a domain name cancelation during the dispute period and no dispute resolution having taken place, the domain becomes available again for any interested party, without the claimant having a preferential registration right to the same domain name.

Separately, the group is also removing a restriction on certain adult domains from being registered.

There are currently about 75,000 .lu domain names registered.

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I haven’t heard the name Backslap Domains in a while.

Greek Island Labs, a company that sells cosmetic products, has sued NamingRights.com and Backslap Domains for cybersquatting* over the domain name Adonia.com (pdf).

Greek Island Labs sells products under the Adonia name, and says it has done so since 2008.

Adonia is the name of an ancient festival, so on the face of it the domain is generic. Of course, that hasn’t stopped companies from filing cybersquatting lawsuits before.

But what caught my eye in this case is NamingRights.com and Backslap domains. I haven’t heard the name Backslap in a while, as this is/was Sahar Sarid’s domain registrar. I have actually never heard of NamingRights.com, despite it being on the web since at least 2010.

Much of the inventory on NamingRights.com appears to be connected to Sarid, as many of the domains at one point had a whois record that showed one of his companies.

The inventory on NamingRights.com is phenomenal.

None of this bodes well for Greek Island Labs. Not only may it be going up against someone who can put up a good defense, but it’s possible the domain has had the same owner since before 2008 despite multiple whois changes.

* The suit claims “This lawsuit involves violations of the Lanham Act and the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, but none of the claims are for cybersquatting.

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.Club Domains, LLC files Form D with SEC.

.Club Domains, LLC, an applicant for the .club top level domain name, has filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it seeks to raise up to $7 million.

The filing states that none of the money has been raised so far, and the company is considering both equity investments and debt.

.Club Domains, LLC is lead by CEO Colin Campbell, who has built a number of successful internet companies. According to his LinkedIn profile, Campbell was co-founder and CEO of Hostopia from 2000-2011. Prior to that he co-founded Tucows and Internet Direct Canada.

The company is competing with Donuts and Merchant Law Group LLP for the .club domain.

Update: .Club announced it raised $3.5 million and will participate in a private auction for the TLD.

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