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My 2023 domain sales results – DNW Podcast #470
It was a good (but inconsistent) year.
2023 is in the books. On today’s show, I share my domain sales results from last year including total sales, breakdown by TLD, median prices, length of domains, acquisition strategy, and more. I also share a couple of tactics I’m going to try to boost sales in 2024.
Also: Escrow.com sales, reverse domain name hijacking, and a $300k domain lost in a cybersquatting dispute
Sponsor: Sell your domains with Sav.com domain landers
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Five Guys burger chain hits domain name roadblock in Sweden
Someone owns the domain name it wants for expanding into Sweden.
Rapidly expanding burger chain Five Guys has hit a snag in Sweden: the domain name fiveguys.se.
As the company continues its international expansion, it has its eyes on the domain name. Unfortunately, a company called Engboms Network Solution AB registered that domain name in 2011.
Five Guys filed a cybersquatting dispute (pdf) against the domain under the .se dispute resolution policy.
But Engboms Network Solution AB says it didn’t register the domain name to target the burger chain. Instead, it was registered in relation to a business regarding five guys working with IT.
Before those in the peanut gallery laugh at that explanation, it’s not as implausible as you might think. After all, Five Guys didn’t open its first location outside of North America until 2013. And at least one other Swedish company, Five guys Transport AB, uses the name Five Guys.
Engboms Network Solution AB hasn’t used the domain name yet, and the World Intellectual Property Organization panelist found there was no evidence that the domain owner knew about the burger chain’s trademark.
The panelist denied Five Guys’ complaint but said it could be refiled if the domain owner subsequently uses the domain in bad faith.
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Sedo’s big sales week and end user domain sales
GM’s OnStar, a commercial refrigeration company and a digital printer bought domain names.
Sedo is having a great start to the year.
On this week’s sales list, the company reported the sales of peace.com for $400,000, eze.com for $200,000, 13bet .com for $74,995, and mba.ai for $50,000.
Unfortunately, I don’t yet know who bought any of these domains yet.
Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo for which I could determine a buyer. You can view previous lists like this here.
GMInsurance.com $11,000 – OnStar Insurance is GM’s auto insurance arm.
FCard.com €5,000 – This domain forwards to the website for FriendSeek, a site by SYNEXIT GmbH for finding friends with common interests.
Telefonzelle .com €3,500 – This site seems to be under construction but will ultimately pitch phone cards.
HBP.ch €2,990 – Solid state battery company High Performance Battery forwards this domain name to its much longer domain name, highperformancebattery.ch.
ArgusRefrigeration.com $2,880 – Argus makes commercial refrigerators.
Uniiswap .org $2,449 – I’m a bit concerned about this one. It forwards to a page with a domain that looks like Uniswap.com, but it’s actually an IDN.
McPower.de €2,400 – Energy and lighting company ETT forwards this domain to a page on its site promoting its McPower brand.
Exclusiv-Catering.de €2,200 – A caterer in Germany is using this domain name.
Sprint.fr €2,000 – This domain forwards to sprint.paris, the website for Groupe Sprint, a digital printing business.
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Unified Carrier Registration Plan tries reverse domain name hijacking
Group that manages UCR registrations loses case against registration filing service.
A UDRP panel has found Unified Carrier Registration Plan to have tried reverse domain name hijacking the domain name UCRRegistration.com in an interesting dispute.
UCR stands for Unified Carrier Registration, which is a sort of tax and registration system applied to trucking companies that operate across state lines. The system is congressionally approved, and the Complainant operates a website on a .gov domain, ucr.gov.
Various third parties, including UCRRegistration.com registrant Excelsior Enterprises International, Inc., provide services to help interstate carriers file their UCR registrations. It’s kind of like the services that help small businesses incorporate or how an income tax filing service helps people file their taxes.
Unified Carrier Registration Plan has a trademark for a logo, but UCR and Unified Carrier Registration by themselves seem to be commonly used terms in the industry. In fact, the Complainant disclaimed exclusive rights to use “Unified Carrier Registration Plan” in its logo trademark.
In a Unified Carrier Registration Plan board meeting on March 3, 2022, the group’s outside counsel commented on another group that provides third-party registration services:
I got a report this afternoon on our activities with six third-party permitting services that we have interacted with. The first is the Simplex group. We sent them a demand letter insisting that they stop using our registered logo. They engaged a lawyer to respond who sent us a letter agreeing with us that they should stop using the logo but they also believe that using the phrase ‘UCR permit’ and ‘UCR registration’ and similar phrases are permitted uses. We agree with that.
This suggests that the group agrees that it cannot stop third-party services from using the terms UCR permit and UCR registration — just that they shouldn’t use its logo.
The three-person UDRP panel found this case was brought in bad faith:
As to Complainant’s asserted common law trademark rights, the evidence before the Panel clearly shows that, prior to the filing of its initial Complaint in this proceeding, Complainant, Unified Carrier Registration Plan, established under a statute which uses “UCR” as an abbreviation for Unified Carrier Registration in the definition of Complainant, was well aware that it has no common law trademark rights in that abbreviation, nor in its combination with the descriptive word “registration”, as its outside Counsel so advised Complainant in 2022. The Panel notes that Complainant’s own website at “https://plan.ucr.gov/about-ucr/” uses “UCR” as an abbreviation:
“Motor carriers involved in interstate commerce, and other businesses subject to Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) are required to submit annual fees based on fleet size to supplement funding for state highway motor carrier registration and safety programs.”
As to legitimacy, the Amended Complaint asserted, as set out above:
“Before any notice to Respondent of the dispute, Respondent has not used, or made demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services or a legitimate noncommercial or fair use. Instead, Respondent is using the confusingly similar domain name to reroute Internet users to its own website, which purports to sell Complainant’s services for an additional fee.
Although the identity of Respondent was not disclosed by the Registrar until after the filing of the Complaint, it is clear that Complainant had long been aware of the legitimate services provided by Respondent and others in the industry, since those services involve payments to Complainant on behalf of their customers, a service expressly recognized by Complainant as permissible in the UCR HANDBOOK, approved by the Board of Directors of Complainant, effective August 11, 2022, available on Complainant’s website:
“Registration Through Third Parties: An entity subject to UCR may engage a third party to perform UCR registration and pay UCR fees. Such arrangements may be subject to the rules of individual participating states. The UCR program does not regulate the fees a private party may charge a registrant for such a service.”
Nevertheless, Complainant proceeded to file its Amended Complaint with full knowledge of Respondent’s rights and legitimate interests in the domain name.
Having regard to all the circumstances of this case, the Panel finds that both the Complaint and the Amended Complaint were brought in bad faith and that each constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP represented the Complainant, and Blank Rome LLP represented the Respondent.
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Escrow.com reveals median price by TLD for sales in 2023
.AI led the pack at $10,000.
Last month, Escrow.com revealed the average price paid for domain name by top level domain transacted through its service.
While it was interesting to see that the average .com price was $41,693, I don’t think this number is particularly useful. After all, it’s distorted by purchases such as chat.com for over $10 million.
I asked Escrow.com if it would provide the median price by top level domain name. Here’s what Escrow.com provided in response:
.com – $4,000
.ai – $10,000
.io – $4,500
.org – $5,237
.net – $2,500
.co – $3,899
.co.uk – $4,673
.ca – $5,000
.it – $,4283
.com.au – $3,239
These numbers are higher than what you can expect the industry-wide median to be because people tend to not use an escrow service for less expensive domain names.
The company also disclosed the exact dollar value of domains transacted on Escrow.com last year: $383,283,044.49.
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Binance wins binance.ae domain name, which loser bought for $300k
Guy who bought domain name for $300k in 2021 loses cybersquatting dispute.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has won a cybersquatting claim for the domain name binance.ae, and the domain owner is about to be out $300,000.
Kirill Zalipaev acquired the domain name through Sedo in November 2021 for a whopping $300,000. I was puzzled at the time because I could not find a connection between Zalipaev and Binance.
It turns out there was none, and Zalipaev bought the domain, hoping to sell it to Binance for even more money.
According to the dispute, Zalipaev contacted Binance through an intermediary in July 2022, offering to sell the domain name for $1,447,000. He then reached out nearly a year later, asking $1,466,677.
When Binance contacted him directly via email, Zalipaev suggested a different price that was still over $1 million.
Binance subsequently filed a cybersquatting dispute (pdf) under the .ae Domain Name Policy.
It appears that Zalipaev is not well-versed in trademarks and the .ae policy. World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Scott Blackmer summarized:
The Respondent does not contest the Complainant’s trademark claims but argues that the .ae Domain Name Policy “does not condition the title of ownership of a domain based on the principle of ownership of trademarks”. Hence, the Respondent (who is not represented by legal counsel) states his belief that he has not violated the Complainant’s intellectual property rights.
On the issue of registration or use in bad faith, Blackmer noted:
The Respondent’s emails show that he recognized the value of the disputed domain name to the Complainant. From his Response, it seems that the Respondent was under the mistaken impression that he was operating in a trademark-free zone, but he was not. He would have been better advised to be, well, better advised.
Indeed, Zalipaev did not hire a lawyer to defend the cybersquatting case. And he just lost a domain he paid $300,000 for.
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Adult cam site dispute results in reverse domain name hijacking finding
Site owner successfully argued that “love cam” is a common descriptive term.
TMD Swiss AG, which operates an adult video cam site at xlovecam .com, has been found guilty of trying to reverse domain name hijack lovecam .com (pdf).
ICF Technology Inc. operates the lovecam .com site. It acquired the domain name in 2013, which was after the Complainant obtained a European trademark registration for xlovecam.
However, the domain owner noted that “love cam” is a descriptive term used in the online adult entertainment industry.
The three-person World Intellectual Property Organization found that ICF Technology has rights or legitimate interests in the domain name because it was genuinely using the domain based on its descriptive meaning and not targeting the Complainant.
It went a step further by finding reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH).
In finding RDNH, the panel took issue with the complaint’s “barest of allegations consisting essentially of three substantive paragraphs, the WhoIs record of the disputed domain name, evidence of the Complainant’s EUTM, the Policy, and a print-out of Fabulous.com’s terms of service.” It also took issue with the Complainant’s failure to address the descriptive nature of the term “love cam.”
The panel noted that the Respondent pointed out the deficiencies in the Complainant’s argument via communication before the case was filed.
The WIPO panel noted:
In the present case, the Respondent’s longstanding registration has been put at risk and the Respondent has been put to considerable trouble and, presumably, expense to defend that registration by the filing of a most basic Complaint.
Merk-Echt B.V. represented the Complainant, and Paul Keating, Esq., represented the domain name owner.
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Weddings, onions, and dude ranches – DNW Podcast #469
Peter Askew talks about a tough onion season and his foray into the wedding business.
It’s been nearly two years since I last caught up with Peter Askew on the podcast. The entrepreneur who sells onions on the internet provides an update on this year’s onion crop and the challenges of selling produce. He also explains why he is dabbling in the wedding business with HighlandsWedding.com, SavannahWedding.com, and DallasWedding.com.
Mentioned in this episode: Vidalia Onions on YouTube
Also: Efty’s big moves, Afternic keywords and more
Sponsor: Sav.com backorders
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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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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