PALM BEACH, FL - On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the addition of “.com” to a generic word or phrase can be trademarked when it reviews “United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V.” on Docket No. 19-46 with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The issue has reached the highest court in the country after lower courts reversed the decisions of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") and Trademark … [Read more...]
Generic Domain “Naturals.com” Subject of WIPO Case; Complainant Uses “Naturals.in”
PALM BEACH, FL – The generic domain name “Naturals.com” is the subject of a WIPO proceeding with the complainant showing as “Ms.Veena Kumaravel” , who is the co-founder of “Naturals”, a beauty salon chain with over 500 locations throughout India. Kumaravel started the business with a partner in 2000 and the business was said in an interview to become “profitable” (and likely at least moderately known in India) by its forth year. The company currently operates on the … [Read more...]
NYT Highlights Sealed Auction of Domain “Democracy.com” Via Heritage Auctions
UPDATE 11/4/2019: Auction for Domain Name “Democracy.com” Extended to November 7th Closing PALM BEACH, FL – What could possibly be better than being the auctioneer of a generic, super premium .com domain name like Democracy.com? Having that same opportunity with it being covered by the New York Times. That’s what’s happening with Democracy.com, a super premium generic domain name which is being offered for sale in a sealed bidding contest held by Heritage Auctions, … [Read more...]
Panels Consistently Find That “Domain Investing” Is Legitimate Bona Fide Offering
PALM BEACH, FL – Upon reading recent news from “Neus News”, I stumbled onto an interesting find where Howard Neu, a long-time attorney for the domain name industry, was representing a domain owner in a case where Oath Inc. (now Verizon Media), the company that purchased Yahoo! related assets in 2017 for $4.83 billion, claimed the domain name “YMobile.com” was infringing on Yahoo! related trademarks such as “Y”’ and “Y!”, as well as “Y Mobile” (although Y Mobile is only held … [Read more...]
Generic Domain Name “Cola.com” For Sale
PALM BEACH, FL – Most people who hear the generic dictionary word “Cola” more than likely associate it with the Coca-Cola beverage manufacturer, mostly known from its flagship carbonated soft-drink “Coca-Cola”, invented well over a hundred years ago in 1886. However, the 4-letter generic word represents a slew of Cola manufacturers and carbonated soft-drink brands - over 100 of them, including some which are considered “Cola-like” brands. It seems safe to assume … [Read more...]
SHERPA: “Wow, So This Is, Really, Maybe, It Would Be Fair to Say, The Biggest Auction The Domain Industry Has Ever Seen?”
NEW YORK, NY - I took the time to watch another Domain Sherpa show today - this one called "Domain Handcapping" since it was related to the upcoming NamesCon show next week from January 26, to January 30, 2019 - including “the main event” – the live auction which is held once a year. I’m very much looking forward to attending this year and I will certainly sit in on it and maybe even purchase something, so I wanted to hear what Monte Cahn and Drew Rosener had to say about … [Read more...]
Why I Purchased a New .Digital gTLD Domain
NEW YORK - Earlier this year I created a new company called Cars Digital Inc., a marketing company which specializes in advertising for used car dealers. As soon as I had realized that a new gTLD “.digital” domain name was available, I checked to see if “Cars.Digital” was already taken - and saw that it indeed was, so there was really nothing I could do about that and moved on with my daily routine. I had already registered the corporation and secured the .com domain name … [Read more...]
Call for Donuts to Release Proof of Original “Record Breaking” gTLD Sale in Late 2017
NEW YORK – With another ‘out of the ordinary’ new Generic Domain Name sale publicly announced by Donuts Inc. for Vacation.Rentals (reportedly acquired for $500,300.00 in an all-cash deal) this becomes their second earth-shattering alternative-dot transaction in the last twelve months of which many will agree, appears to be sent straight from the heavens above. In fact, all of their employees should vacate the Kirkland, Washington premises immediately and purchase lottery … [Read more...]
Someone Caught Great Deal at Flippa; How Is This Domain Venue Performing for You?
NEW YORK, NY - Someone landed a fantastic deal on Flippa this weekend. Amazingly, I lost the auction despite my accidental astronomical one-too-many zero’s high-bid. I’m not going to mention what domain it was (to avoid any politics on the issue), [all luck to the winner who got a great deal] but the domain name was a single word .com highly-commercial term with an Estibot well over $200,000.00 and it sold for about 9 percent of that. Not a .net domain selling for 9%, but … [Read more...]
The Domain Business: An American Dream and Reality of .Com Domaining
Below are some of the best videos on the domain business that I have ever seen. These stories lend credibility to what domainers work towards each day. I’ve been in the domain business for over a decade and I had not seen two out of three of these videos so I am sure there are others who have not seen them either and would love to watch them. These videos articulate the reason that the domain business, a relatively unknown industry, is one of the most exciting and lucrative … [Read more...]
Review.info Sells for $6k on Sedo.com Weekly Domain Name Sales List 04/03/2017 – 04/09/2017
NEW YORK, NY - Today, Sedo released its weekly sales list, a list of public transactions above $2,000. This weeks highlights included the top .com sold as Susen.com at $36,000.00 US, the top ccTLD as blackjack-vegas.de at 53,052.50 US and the top “other” TLD as review.info at 6,000.00 US. It is interesting to see a .info domain name sell for three times what its Estibot value shows it should be ($2,000.00). I like .info domains a lot - always have. It seems that every now … [Read more...]
Making Their Mark: “Big Brands” Invest Hundreds of Millions on .Dot Alternatives
NEW YORK, NY - Regardless of what your position is on new gTLD domains "Big Brands" are buying in hook, line and sinker while ICANN is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars on new gTLD fees. Each new application cost its applicant $185,000.00 and with it, an annual maintenance fee of $24,000.00 (yearly recurring). This doesn't include potentially hundreds of generic domains that were applied for and went to auction (I didn't count each one [Full statistics here] … [Read more...]
Measuring New gTLD Growth and Market Share via The DNS Zone File System
NEW YORK, NY - As should be no surprise, new gTLD growth and usage is on the rise exponentially. There are several tools available for measuring gTLD growth and market share which are ‘fairly accurate’ as they use the DNS Zone File system which maps domain names and IP addresses. One such tool which I originally thought was new is ntldstats.com, although the owner Stefan Meinecke was interviewed back in 2014 by TheDomains.com - so it is far from … [Read more...]
New gTLD? Not So Fast; History Suggests New ‘Right of the Dots’ Could = Total Failure
It's a time where new generic top level domains are taking a lot of the lime-light in domain circles, sales charts, and buzz; but is the entire thing just a huge distraction from what domainers should really be focused on? I stumbled upon a case-in-point scenario that no domainer should ignore, and I cannot believe no-one is talking about it more. It's got me questioning even my own enthusiasm for these new, right of the dots. And please do not get me wrong; I myself have … [Read more...]