News
Dynadot’s monthly .ai auction grosses over $300k with six figure sale
Here’s everything that closed at $500 or more.
Dynadot’s monthly .ai expired domain name auction ended last Monday. It was New Year’s Day and I wasn’t able to keep tabs on the auction. However, I now have the final bid prices.
Assuming all of these transactions go through, the auction will gross over $300,000. That’s less than the auction that closed in December, although the inventory probably wasn’t as strong. It didn’t help that the auction ended on a major holiday, either.
Vision.ai led the pack with a six-figure closing price. Here are all of the domains that closed at $500 or more:
vision.ai 100,000
trick.ai 24,977
insure.ai 24,700
dog.ai 21,311
betty.ai 20,088
he.ai 15,800
initiate.ai 13,200
magazine.ai 10,000
sustainable.ai 7,100
hoax.ai 6,101
persons.ai 6,100
ru.ai 6,100
streak.ai 4,300
producers.ai 4,054
l1.ai 3,850
discussion.ai 3,383
actualize.ai 3,209
astound.ai 2,939
reconstruction.ai 2,827
redrock.ai 2,551
selena.ai 2,345
rainfall.ai 2,025
twice.ai 2,025
epay.ai 2,001
h3.ai 1,934
visionx.ai 1,913
hose.ai 1,631
esignature.ai 1,525
thermostat.ai 1,501
jobfind.ai 1,325
katherine.ai 1,314
stylus.ai 1,289
chateau.ai 1,136
jazzy.ai 1,006
banshee.ai 1,001
enigmatic.ai 999
countable.ai 965
omo.ai 965
calvary.ai 929
cathedral.ai 918
gfe.ai 918
3dprinted.ai 898
fireup.ai 898
ugo.ai 810
employed.ai 807
emg.ai 801
mediq.ai 785
voicestudio.ai 760
brg.ai 740
drain.ai 737
protech.ai 735
zoomer.ai 703
logistica.ai 698
smartcart.ai 695
alx.ai 676
ebanking.ai 676
medscan.ai 671
utc.ai 671
bng.ai 625
documented.ai 616
fixel.ai 616
settled.ai 616
ddr.ai 605
scoops.ai 586
myart.ai 565
reserva.ai 565
waking.ai 561
dinos.ai 551
grains.ai 545
futurelab.ai 544
bhg.ai 515
gtl.ai 515
utg.ai 515
v5.ai 510
york.ai 504
sweeps.ai 501
Post link: Dynadot’s monthly .ai auction grosses over $300k with six figure sale
© DomainNameWire.com 2023. 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 Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission.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 editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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Verizon wins $450k cybersquatting judgment
Company gets $50,000 in statutory damages per domain.
Telecommunications company Verizon, through its Verizon Trademark Services LLC affiliate, has been awarded $450,000 in statutory damages against a cybersquatter.
The company filed the case in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. against Verizon Trademark Services LLC and Matt McMan.
If the corporate name of the defendant sounds confusing, it’s because the defendant took a rather interesting approach to cybersquatting. According to the court’s opinion, issued yesterday:
Per the Complaint, VTS LLC—under the exclusive control of its “sole organizer and contact,” Co-Defendant Matt McMan—registered multiple infringing domain names and trade names as part of a scheme to mislead consumers, damage the VERIZON mark, and extort Verizon. Id. ¶¶ 10, 67–68, 96–100. As early as April 2023, the various named Defendants (including VTS LLC), through McMan, began registering domains that derived from or incorporated trademarks owned by Verizon, which prompted Verizon to send cease-and-desist letters objecting to the unauthorized use of its trademarks. Id. ¶¶ 41, 44, 72. In response, Defendants doubled down, registering additional domain names (as well as trade names) incorporating the entirety of the VERIZON mark or other marks owned by Plaintiff. Id. ¶¶ 45, 73–74, 77, 83–84. When registering the domains at issue, Defendants often did so anonymously, using “a popular domain privacy service” known as “Domains By Proxy.” Id. ¶¶ 42, 103.
At the height of this misconduct, VTS LLC drafted a “Complaint” alleging that Plaintiff was misleading consumers. Id. ¶ 94. This same document also boasted that Plaintiff “Can’t Even Get a DBA in Washington, DC for ‘Verizon Trademark Services’ LLC because . . . Verizon Trademark Services LLC Owned By Matt McMan Will NOT Grant ‘Verizon’ written Consent.” ECF 1-10 at 4. On multiple occasions, Defendant sent versions of this “Complaint” to Plaintiff and government officials in a coercive attempt to sell or license these marks to Verizon. See ECF 1 ¶¶ 88, 94, 100; ECF 1-11; ECF 1-12; ECF 1-13. When Verizon resisted those efforts, Defendants promptly registered even more domains incorporating the VERIZON mark.
The defendant didn’t show up in court and Verizon won a default judgment.
Verizon asked for $50,000 statutory damages for nine domain registrations, including VerizonTrademark .com and Verizon .com.co. The court awarded (pdf) this amount and ordered the domains transferred to Verizon.
This appears to be the defendant’s website.
Post link: Verizon wins $450k cybersquatting judgment
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New registrations plummet after Squarespace takes over Google Domains
Unsurprisingly, the strong brand name mattered.
Squarespace acquired Google Domains on September 8, 2023, and we now have an idea of how important the Google brand name was to ginning up registrations there.
ICANN has published data from .com registry Verisign showing new registrations at each registrar for September.
In August, Google Domains and Squarespace registered a combined 250,324 domains. In September, they registered just 189,713 new .com domains.
Google is using Squarespace when people buy some of its products that need a domain and is also sending people to Squarespace when they land on the Google Domains site. (Google Domains still shows up #2 for me in Google when I search for domain names.) Still, it’s clear that the brand name drove a lot of registrations. And these numbers reflect only .com domains, so it’s surely a bigger delta when including all domains.
The winners? Other registrars that picked up the registrations that would have gone to Google had it still been a domain registrar.
Below is a chart showing how the largest registrars did in terms of new registrations in September. Note that the rankings include multiple registrar accreditations within families of registrars. You can see the list at the end of this post. (I started including Mesh Digital and the five “Go” registrars (e.g., Go China Domains) in GoDaddy’s numbers this month. This added about 2k new registrations and 530k total registrations.)
1. GoDaddy.com (NYSE: GDDY) 715,431 (775,175 in August 2023)
2. Namecheap Inc. 283,620 (291,747)
4. Newfold Digital 216,538 (169,663)
3. Squarespace (NYSE: SQSP) 189,713 (250,324)
5. Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) 163,648 (163,629)
6. Gname.com 133,917 (115,409)
7. IONOS 79,420 (99,454)
8. Alibaba 71,895
9. Dynadot 71,212
10. Wix 70,798 (71,825)
Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of August.
1. GoDaddy 56,142,674 (55,638,534 in August 2023)
2. Newfold Digital 12,380,044 (12,370,532)
3. Tucows 11,113,636 (11,131,272)
4. Namecheap 9,387,689 (9,376,275)
5. Squarespace 8,184,335 (8,166,306)
6. TurnCommerce 5,940,486 (5,958,992)
7. IONOS# 5,669,464 (5,659,585)
8. Alibaba 4,187,402 (4,213,654)
9. Gname 4,237,209 (4,155,354)
10. CentralNic 3,826,492 (3,910,648)
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations, and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.
- GoDaddy includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains, Uniregistry, GoDaddy Corporate Domains, MeshDigital, the 5 “Go Country” registrars, and 123 Reg
- Namecheap includes Namecheap and Spaceship
- Tucows includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
- Newfold Digital Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain, Bigrock, Network Solutions, Register.com, MarkMonitor, SnapNames registrars, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape. There are other Newfold registrars, but these are the biggest.
- Squarespace includes Squarespace and Google
- TurnCommerce Includes NameBright and DropCatch registrars
- IONOS includes Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys, and world4you
- CentralNic includes Key-Systems, 1API, Internet.bs, TLD Registrar Solutions, RegistryGate, Moniker, Instra
Post link: New registrations plummet after Squarespace takes over Google Domains
© DomainNameWire.com 2023. 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 editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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December’s top domain name stories
A look back at the holiday month in the domain name business.
These were the top five stories on Domain Name Wire last month:
1. 14 things you can’t do with .AI domain names – .ai is a country code domain, and you should understand the rules Anguilla has placed on it…which are constantly changing.
2. ICANN debates action after community member’s antisemitic comments – He is behind a domain registrar, a UDRP provider, and an L-Root operator. ICANN is trying to figure out how best to respond to his comments.
3. Two things to do today for your Afternic domain names – One isn’t quite as urgent as I thought, but owners of .io and .xyz domains should take notice of the other.
4. Using Domain Academy’s Research Snapshot to evaluate domains – Some nifty data tools help when evaluating domain names.
5. 3 end user domain buyers tell their stories – A lease-to-own deal, a ccTLD-to-gTLD upgrade, and an expired domain purchase.
Here are podcasts you might have missed:
Selling brandable domains with Keith DeBoer – DNW Podcast #466
2023’s top stories – DNW Podcast #465
NIS2 is here – DNW Podcast #464
Post link: December’s top domain name stories
© DomainNameWire.com 2023. 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 editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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ICANN might not renew TAG-Domains accreditation after antisemitic remarks
ICANN gives registrar mini-extension while it awaits Ombud’s determination.
ICANN has delayed fully renewing the accreditation agreement for TAG-Domains after one of the registrar’s leaders made antisemitic remarks.
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, a leader in the intellectual property community in the Middle East, said in a TV interview:
The Jews do not have any ideology. All they care about is money and interests. I had a friend who was a German cabinet member. I once asked him: ‘When Hitler, may God forgive him, carried out the Holocaust, why didn’t he finish the job and kill all the Jews?’ He said to me: ‘It’s the other way around, but don’t tell anyone I said this. He left a group of them on purpose, so that people would know why we carried out the Holocaust. When you would be tormented by them, you would know the reason.
Abu-Ghazaleh is also affiliated with a UDRP provider and a group that hosts an instance of ICANN’s L Root in Jordan.
ICANN has referred the matter to its Ombuds, stating that this violates ICANN’s Expected Standards of Behavior.
In a letter to TAG-Domains, ICANN noted that the group’s accreditation is set to renew on January 16. Rather than renewing it for a full term, ICANN is renewing it for three months to allow for the conclusion of the Ombuds investigation.
While many people find Abu-Ghazaleh’s comments abhorrent, some in the ICANN community are privately questioning the extension of ICANN’s Expected Standards of Behavior to speech made outside of any connection to ICANN and the domain name community.
This particular case puts ICANN in a precarious position. Abu-Ghazaleh commented in the heat of a war between Israel, which has generally been backed by the United States, where ICANN is based, and someone in a region that has often opposed the establishment of Isreal.
ICANN seems to understand this to a degree and has alluded to free speech considerations.
It’s possible that an apology from Abu-Ghazaleh would resolve the matter, but I’m not sure that one is forthcoming.
One thing’s certain: ICANN’s interim Ombuds has her hands full.
Post link: ICANN might not renew TAG-Domains accreditation after antisemitic remarks
© DomainNameWire.com 2023. 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 editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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WIPO panel lets bakery off the hook
Panel says Complainant, represented by a 100+-year-old IP law firm, has “simply not understood the Policy.”
Some UDRP filings have no chance of succeeding.
Consider the case (pdf) that Roberto Industria Alimentare S.r.l. filed against the domain name roberto.com. The Italian baked goods company filed the dispute against Reflex Publishing, which acquired the domain name over two decades ago.
You don’t have to be Italian to know that Roberto is a very common name. In fact, it’s one of the top 20 most common names in Italy.
Yet Roberto Industria Alimentare S.r.l. argued in its case that “ROBERTO” is not a common or descriptive term but is obviously a trade mark in which the Complainant has rights.”
Um, OK.
The World Intellectual Property Organization rightly found in Reflex Publishing’s favor. It noted that Reflex is a company in Florida and probably wasn’t aware of the Complainant. And even if it was aware of the Complainant, “Having regard to the fact of its varied potential uses and the Respondent’s intended use non-infringing of the disputed domain name, registration of it by the Respondent, would not have been abusive.”
The three-person panel then listed several reasons why this appears to be a case of reverse domain name hijacking:
- the Complainant has been professionally represented and many panels will find that such a party should be held to a higher standard.
- this was a misconceived Complaint in that the Complainant had no credible basis for alleging that its mark had a reputation in the United States and consequently that the Respondent was, or should have been, aware of it. Moreover, it adduced scarcely any evidence to support its assertions and it produced no evidence at all in relation to the alleged repute of its ROBERTO mark in the United States as at the date of registration of the disputed domain name.
- the record suggests that the Complainant bought these proceedings because its offer of USD 1,000 for the disputed domain name had been rejected by the Respondent. The Panel notes that the Complainant’s offer did not contain any allegation of wrongdoing on the part of the Respondent in its registration and use of the disputed domain name and was made some 23 years after the Respondent’s registration of it. Having recourse to proceedings under the Policy following an unsuccessful attempt to purchase a domain name is sometimes referred to as a “Plan B.”
Got it, so reverse domain name hijacking.
Except the panel let the Complainant off the hook, saying it probably just didn’t know what it was doing by filing the complaint:
In these proceedings, some of more egregious features associated with a finding of RDNH, such as manifestly untrue allegations against a respondent and attempts to mislead the panel, are absent. The overall impression is that the Complainant has simply not understood the Policy and the burden it has to meet. For this reason, by a very narrow balance, the Panel declines to make a finding of RDNH.
Wouldn’t you say that not mentioning that Roberto is a common first name was an attempt to mislead the panel?
And get this. The Complainant’s representative was Società Italiana Brevetti S.p.A. Go to its website, and you’ll see that it prominently displays “Intellectual Property since 1882” in Italian at the very top.
So it just didn’t know what it was doing? Hmm.
John Berryhill represented Reflex Publishing.
Post link: WIPO panel lets bakery off the hook
© DomainNameWire.com 2023. 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 editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.
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Google publishes their TLD registry software: Nomulus
Google announced this morning that they are releasing their TLD registry platform, Nomulus, which is written in Java, under an Apache 2.0 license. The company uses the software to run their own registry for their TLDs. Portfolio TLD applicant Donuts has partnered with Google and contributed to the source code – they will also be running a public test instance of the system, which is geared towards being run on the Google Cloud Platform. So far, Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME) has been operating Donuts’ registry backend.
Also covered by:
- DomainNameWire: Google open sources domain registry, Donuts collaborates as pressure on registry providers mounts. The article focusses on the rising pressure on Domain Registry Operators, and a potential switch of platforms by Donuts away from Rightside.
Here’s the full press release:
Introducing Nomulus: an Open Source Top-Level Domain Name RegistryDate: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 8:00am PT
Author: Ben McIlwain, Software Engineer
Today, Google is proud to announce the release of Nomulus, a new open source cloud-based registry platform that powers Google’s top level domains (TLDs). We’re excited to make this piece of Internet infrastructure available to everyone.
TLDs are the top level of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), and they collectively host every domain name on the Internet. To manage a TLD, you need a domain name registry — a behind-the-scenes system that stores registration details and DNS information for all domain names under that TLD. It handles WHOIS queries and requests to buy, check, transfer, and renew domain names. When you purchase a domain name on a TLD using a domain name registrar, such as Google Domains, the registrar is actually conducting business with that TLD’s registry on your behalf. That’s why you can transfer a domain from one registrar to another and have it remain active and 100% yours the entire time.
The project that became Nomulus began in 2011 when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the biggest ever expansion of Internet namespace, aimed at improving choice and spurring innovation for Internet users. Google applied to operate a number of new generic TLDs, and built Nomulus to help run them.
We designed Nomulus to be a brand-new registry platform that takes advantage of the scalability and easy operation of Google Cloud Platform. Nomulus runs on Google App Engine and is backed by Google Cloud Datastore, a highly scalable NoSQL database. Nomulus can manage any number of TLDs in a single shared instance and supports the full range of TLD functionality required by ICANN, including the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), WHOIS, reporting, and trademark protection. It is written in Java and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.
We hope that by providing access to our implementation of core registry functions and up-and-coming services like Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), we can demonstrate advanced features of Google Cloud Platform and encourage interoperability and open standards in the domain name industry for registry operators like Donuts. With approximately 200 TLDs, Donuts has made early contributions to the Nomulus code base and has spun up an instance which they’ll be sharing soon.
For more information, view Nomulus on GitHub.
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