Domains Arena

This week's highest sale has been achieved by Software.de that went for 235.025 EUR at Sedo. Another dot DE domain that sells for a such price, demonstrating the excelent health of the german domain afermarket. The second highest sale of the week corresponds to business.tv, sold for $100,999 also at SEDO. It seems that finally dot TV is starting to have the consideration it deserves, despite some will say that this is a ridiculous amount for such a keyword.

Anyway, all other high-priced sales this week at Sedo are dot com and include :

gr8.com $16,000
iwant2.com 15,000 GBP
kleding.com 14,362 EUR
clickandgo.com $14,000
conjugasion.com 11,001 EUR
carpictures1.com $10,500
goalbet.com 10,000 EUR
reson8.com $10,000
creditimmobilier.com 9,750 EUR
hxjq.com $8,900
urbanjunkies.com 7,700 GBP
simplyjobs.com $6,750
festgeldkonto.com 6,100 EUR

Here we have another WIPO procedure won by Google over a domain name in a clear trademark infringement. The domain was vietnamadwords.com and Google, represented in this case by Ranjan Narula, won the procedure over the previous owner.

Google has offered advertising services under the mark Adwords since 2001. Therefore,they contended in the complaint that the domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark. But not only this, they also declared that the respondent registered and used the domain name in bad faith.

• "Respondent had Complainant and its ADWORDS mark in mind when registering the Domain Name. The former prominent use of the word Google on Respondent’s website makes this conclusion virtually inescapable."
• "Respondent’s conduct constitutes an intentional attempt to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to Respondent’s site by creating a likelihood of confusion between the ADWORDS mark and the Domain Name."

The respondent failed to provide a response in this proceeding and the complainant managed to demonstrate all the elements needed, and the Panel decided the disputed domain name be transferred from the respondent to the complainant. As everyone expected, of course...

To see the full decision you can visit this page.

I have just read some interesting news at elliotsblog.com regarding the inminent Sex.com auction. It was well known that the domain that has been considered the premiumest domain by excelence was going to be auctioned at the law offices of Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP, 156 West 56th Street, New York, New York on March 18, 2010 at 11 am.

The reason of the auction is a result of a foreclosure, a few years after the 2006 aquisition, which was reported (although never confirmed) to have been for an amount near the $14 million mark.

Initially the auction house nor the law firm representing the lender confirmed the initial price, although we could read in several places that any potential bidder should proof his "economical status" before entering tha auction, a certified check of $1,000,000 would be required to bid.

Now to the news, this is what we read at Elliot's blog:

I was informed by Richard Maltz of Maltz Auctions that there will be no reserve price for the Sex.com auction. Registered bidders will be permitted to bid online or in person at the Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP offices. In addition, Maltz added, “the secured party does reserve the right to bid under the law.”
Without a reserve price set, I would expect several bidders to participate in this landmark auction. Full auction details, including the terms and conditions (pdf) of the auction are available on the Maltz Auctions website.

Here we come with more successful sales reported by SEDO this week. Today we have another ccTLD sold for a good amount. As you could expect is another sale of a German domain, one of the most active ccTLDs in the afermarket. The name is Tracker.de, and it was sold for a total of 11,500 EUR at SEDO.

Another ccTLD domain sale that we can remark is ipad.in, on the Indian ccTLD. This domain went for 899 $. I dunno (although I doubt it) if Apple bought this one, but in any other case it is a clear Trademark Infringement.

And finally, here you have a list of some recent domain names sales with interesting numbers:

tracker.de 11,500 EUR
sarrafi.com 800 USD
tradesmancompare.com 2,000 GBP
blinds.pro 3,200 USD
promocentre.com 690 USD
wordpressdesigners.com 400 USD
outdoorfurniture.net 3,500 USD
mediasports.net 888 USD
faxservices.org 988 USD
horex.com 4,000 USD
ipad.in 899 USD
klab.com 3,000 EUR
swearbox.com 700 USD
wordpressdesigners.com 400 USD
interrogate.com 1,000 USD
mydms.com 1,000 USD

All these were also sold at SEDO.

We can find some interesting sales at this week's SEDO sales list. The domain name at the top of the chart is without any doubt Metal.com, a great domain name that changes of hands for an interesting amount: 65.000 $. According to the whois records, the name of the seller is Wayne Lazarus of JZJ, LLC.

Other interesting sales this week include a .co.uk name, isp.co.uk, that went for 7.500 GBP and another generic, crosswords.net, that sold for 15.000 $.

You can find other interesting sales at the list below:

crosswords.net 15,000 USD
horex.com 4,000 USD
thesongproject.com 1,050 USD
ipad.in 899 USD
klab.com 3,000 EUR
swearbox.com 700 USD
wordpressdesigners.com 400 USD
interrogate.com 1,000 USD
mydms.com 1,000 USD
diamondservices.com 4,000 USD
swearbox.com 700 USD
cowcow.co.uk 1,199 GBP
questioncity.com 3,000 USD
isp.co.uk 7,500 GBP
mydms.com 1,000 USD
skyview.org 2,200 USD

The Coca Cola Company, world's largest drinks producer, has recenty won another domain, trademark infringing, through a WIPO process.

Coca Cola started the aforementioned WIPO on the domain cokerewards2009.com due the negligence of the current domain owner to transfer the domain name to the company. Of course the decision was quite easy and contained no surprises since the complainant, the Coca Cola Company, owns trademark registrations for the "Coke" trademark in every country in the world.

Also they allegated that the registrant of the domain name was using the disputed domain name in bad faith.

"The Respondent’s registration and use of the Domain Name in connection with fraudulent attempts to collect personal information by creating the false impression that the site was affiliated with the Complainant is a clear indication of bad faith."

The reason of the decision (which you can see here), to transfer the domain back to the trademark owner, was due the respondent failure to to submit a response on the process. Although, nothing would have changed the WIPO decision, of course.

An IDG report has revealed that China has enforced its measures to control the content hosted on all .CN domains. The report states that CNNIC has hired 600 temporary workers to check all dot CN websites to find erotic content and incorrect records.

What a difficult task for the 600 employes that will need to check about 14,000,000 .CN domains given that .CN is one of the most popular extensions these days.

But these news are not that surprising since CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) announced the "cleanup of .CN domains" some time ago. "While lax regulation in China has been partly blamed for malicious activity on .CN domains, the government's crackdown has focused on porn more than Web security," says the IDG report.

In fact, as said by Rebecca MacKinnon in an e-mail to IDG, "As with so many cleanups in China, there is a very legitimate crime-fighting and law enforcement side of this," but continued "But the flip side is that it also provides a very handy excuse to tighten controls on political and dissenting speech at the same time."

You can see the full report at Computer World.

Great news for the Spanish and Latin American domain investors. On February 7th new shiny times started for .CO (Colombia) ccTLD, which management has changed from their previows "owners", Universidad de los Andes, to .CO Internet SAS.

During the first hour with the new managers, more than 500 registrations occured under the .COM.CO ccTLD, the only available TLD at this moment, while we are waiting the launch of .CO (note .COM typo) in the following days. One of the key points of this success was, clearly, the decision of Godaddy to sell this name, which does at a price of 39.95 $.

This is for sure one ccTLD that will cause impact on the Spanish market, and the registrations are hot at the Spanish specific forums. Also a couple of aftermarket sales have been reported.

You will be able to follow all .CO and .COM.CO news at the new management website: www.cointernet.co.

The first week of February hasn't been so generous with domain sales, being DownloadTube.com the highest sale on Sedo for 33.000 $. The second highest sale of the week was for a two letter ccTLD domain, wo.de, that sold at 20.000 EUR and finally the top three is completed by kulu.com at 25.000 $.

You can find the rest of destacable sales in the following list:

Dot COM Sales

downloadtube.com 33000 USD
kulu.com 25000 USD
3p.com 19500 USD
gitana.com 15000 USD
optivo.com 15000 EUR
freecomputers.com 13500 USD
screenprinter.com 12000 USD
gmh.com 10099 USD
energyadvice.com 8500 USD
directfurniture.com 8000 GBP
lacrossesticks.com 7500 USD
designliving.com 7371 EUR
joyus.com 7250 USD
casinospiele.com 5500 EUR

ccTLD Domain Sales

wo.de 20000 EUR
hybrids.de 7950 EUR
better.fr 7500 EUR
site.co.uk 7051 GBP
tuh.co.uk 6500 USD
accelerate.eu 6000 EUR
en.de 6000 EUR
73.de 5000 EUR
wandtatoos.de 5000 EUR
finden.at 4500 EUR
highheels.co.uk 4500 GBP
sixx.de 4500 EUR
87.de 4500 EUR

"Bad news" for the ones that have domains at DNGLOBE LLC. Finally, after a long dispute, ICANN announced the non renewal of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement after its expiration.

"The termination letter has been sent to DNGLOBE outlining the decision and reasons behind the decision."

Obviously, the users of the registrar won't lose the rights on their domains since ICANN has started a process to find another accredited registrar to move the domains owned by DNGLOBE LLC.

"To protect registrants, ICANN has initiated a process to identify a qualified and accredited registrar to take over management of the domain names formerly managed by DNGLOBE LLC through a bulk transfer. "

The affected users, or the curious ones, can find further information about this issue and its process at ICANN's website.