Internet Real Estate Group Buys Patents.com
Thursday, May 10th, 2007
Company short-circuits auction, buys Patents.com for undisclosed amount.
A few weeks ago I wrote about an “auction” for Patents.com, which I expected to bring in $1M+. The sellers ended up striking a deal with Internet Real Estate Group (formerly DealJam), and details of the sale were not disclosed.
Internet Real Estate Group (IREG) owns some of the world’s greatest domain names, including Software.com, Sweepstakes.com, Phone.com, and Shop.com. The company has also been an active seller of domains, although in recent years it has focused on purchases. Some of its more notable sales include CreditCards.com and Computer.com (the latter sold to Tiger Direct). Just this month IREG sold Luggage.com to CSN Store, Inc.
IREG is taking a different approach to some of the newer entrants into the domain name market. Many of these companies have focused on acquiring massive portfolios of domains, wheras IREG focuses solely on premium domains. Some of the large portfolio holders seem to acquire good names by chance as part of larger purchases. Part of the problem is that these companies buy domains almost solely on multiples of pay-per-click revenue, and premium domains like Patents.com have much more value than 10x, 50x, or 100x pay-per-click revenues.
If details were not disclosed, can it really be said they “bought” the domain ?
Adam, what are you suggesting? On IREG’s web page it says:
Internet Real Estate Group acquires Patents.com for an undisclosed amount.
They’re smart to not disclose the amount.
Sometimes Internet Real Estate Group (not to be confused with Internet REIT) buys domains and places them into subsidiary companies that are named after the domain name purchased and ending in LLC; therefore, one has to wonder why. Why not put all their domain names under holding company to make asset management easier and more efficient? It leads me to believe that perhaps they don’t just buy domains for cash outright, but rather invite the new owners to take up equity with other IREG partners and IREG itself in separate, IREG minority-owned subsidiaries.
Cheers,
Doug
Oops, that should be “invite the sellers” not “invite the new owners”. There is also a missing word “one” between “under” and “holding”
Sorry,
Doug
Doug, that makes sense to me. If you’re going to give equity for a domain then you need to find a way to give equity in the domain only, not your entire company.
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I know the guy who sold this domain name. I think his name is Oppendhal. He is an attorney living in Colorado.
[...] Group ultimately purchased Patents.com for an undisclosed amount (which Quinn states as “reportedly between $1 to $2 million” but I couldn’t confirm [...]
I don’t think Patent Monkey is working anymore for patent PDF downloads.
But I found a better site at Patent Retriever - http://www.patentretriever.com
[...] year, the domain name Patents.com was sold to Internet Real Estate Group for an undisclosed amount of money speculated to be over $1 Million. Following the sale, the Internet Real Estate Group (which is [...]
[...] year, the domain name Patents.com was sold to Internet Real Estate Group for an undisclosed amount of money speculated to be over $1 Million. Following the sale, the Internet Real Estate Group (which is [...]