Angels lose UDRP for Angels.com.

The Los Angeles Angels Major League Baseball team has lost its fight for Angels.com. The organization filed for a UDRP in February claiming rights to the trademark “Angels” and that the current registrant was using it in bad faith. The Angels filed for arbitration after the owner of the domain, Lee Dongyeon of South Korea, offered to sell it for $300,000 to an unidentified agent. Dongyeon purchased the domain for roughly $25,000 in 2005.

Dongyeon defended his rights to the domain name citing the general nature of the domain Angels.com:

‘Angel,’ meaning God’s messenger, is one of the first words Respondent got to know when he began learning English as a foreign language. Respondent has been calling his two children ‘Angels.’ Respondent’s daughter calls herself ‘Daddy’s Angel.’ Respondent purchased , thinking about that familiar word, and not of ten-odd baseball players who do their job in California, U.S.A., which Respondent had never visited….It is recognized that Complainant’s mark is similar to the domain in dispute. However, the word ‘Angels’ is a general noun, having no discrimination whatsoever. Complainant only has limited rights to the trademark ‘Angels,’ not being granted exclusive possession rights to the word ‘Angels’ itself.

Dongyeon claims Angels Baseball tried to entrap him with its offer to buy the domain, since an inquiry was made through a broker not identifying himself as representing Angels Baseball. He also owns the “Angels” trademark in Korea.

Part of Angels Baseball’s claims was that the domain served ads related to baseball and tickets. The domain was parked at Sedo and Angels Baseball used the parking page as evidence. Dongyeon defended the parking page:

After purchasing the domain name, Respondent connected it to a paid search site managed by a third party, Sedoparking.com administered by Sedo.com which is based in Germany. Sedoparking.com adopts Geo-targeting system in which, when a person uses Google keyword search ads, different search results display depending on which country the user resides in, according to Google’s policy.

When domain owners choose several keywords relating to their web pages, the sites of advertisers who have paid for those matching keywords get linked to the domain pages. Where linked ad sites vary depending on where (in which country) Internet users are. Due to these features of Geo-targeting system of Google, Respondent had never known that Respondent’s web page contains links relating to Complainant before Respondent received the notice of dispute. Respondent became aware of the existence of the links to ticket-selling sites of the baseball games that Complainant provides only after Respondent viewed the web page provided as evidence material by Complainant.

The panel found in Dongyeon’s favor:

The Panel finds that the domain name in dispute is identical to the ANGELS marks, in which Complainant has rights. The Panel further finds that before receiving notice of the present dispute Respondent registered the ANGELS service mark in Korea, which registration gives Respondent a title to the domain name. Accordingly, the Panel found that Respondent has rights or legitimate interest in the domain name. Finally, the Panel finds that Complainant failed to prove that Respondent was aware of Complainant or Complainant’s mark at the time of the registration of the domain name in dispute.

By filing a UDRP, the Angels were trying to spend a few thousand dollars to get the domain rather than a few hundred thousand. By losing, they might end up paying a few million. Such is UDRP roulette.

Domain auction fans can access TDNAM and bid on domains from their mobile phones.

It’s only fitting that a domain registrar is making good use of the .mobi domain name. If registrars don’t use .mobi themselves, why should anyone else?

GoDaddy recently launched a mobile version of its popular The Domain Name Aftermarket service, a site that offers expired domains and third party domains for sale. The company describes TDNAM.mobi:

Manage your Domain Name Aftermarket account from anywhere with www.TDNAM.mobi, our new Web site formatted specifically for your mobile device. At TDNAM.mobi, you can use your Web-enabled mobile device to access your account and make counter offers on the domains you’re watching, monitor the bid activity on the domains you’re selling and more! Best of all, you can react instantly to SMS messages for Auction Bid expirations, Outbid Notifications and Auction Watching expirations, all from your mobile device.

GoDaddy.mobi simply forwards to GoDaddyMobile.com, which lets you register domains. It’s not a good advertisement for .mobi that the domain simply forwards to a .com. (As an aside, it might be worth registering your GoDaddy domains through GoDaddyMobile.com instead of GoDaddy.com because you’ll deal with fewer upsells and ads — it’s a simple Google-like interface.)

Here’s a rundown of other domain name registrars and how they are using .mobi:

-Network Solutions – displays a simple information site with a sales phone number
-Register.com – they don’t own Register.mobi, mTLD (the .mobi registry) does. I suppose there are downsides to owning a generic domain for your company brand — its harder to get it in all extensions.
-Dotster – not in use
-Moniker – forwards to .com
-eNom – allows you to register domains

It makes sense for registrars to offer registration through .mobi. Most ideas for domain names come to me when I’m away from the computer. I write them down until I am able to logon. It would be great to register them immediately when I think of them.

Related story: Organizations Launch .mobi Web Sites.

73% of survey respondents say they’d register .net if .com was taken.

Finding good .com domains is getting harder and harder. Respondents to Domain Name Wire’s 2007 survey were asked “If a .com is taken, what’s your second choice of a TLD?”. For the second year in a row, .net came out on top with 73% of the vote. Last year .net took 63% of the vote. The rank order from last year stayed the same, although .org slipped a bit:

1. .Net 73%
2. .Info 17%
3. .Org 9%
4. .Biz 2%

(Total greater than 100% due to rounding). Respondents were not allowed to select country code domains, such as .de and .us, as alternatives.

I was somewhat surprised by .org’s drop given some high dollar sales in December 2006, including Date.org for $150,000 and Loan.org for $105,000. However, .org is still recognized as a non-commercial domain by most web users.

There have been a number of notable .net sales over the past year:

Sex.net $454,500
RealEstate.net $300,000
CreditCards.net $118,500
Bingo.net $56,500
Career.net $52,500
Model.net $50,000

The table below shows comparative results from this year and last year.

Of course, most domain investors will simply select an alternative .com domain if their first pick is unavailable or the price is too high.

Click here for more results from the 2007 Domain Name Wire Survey.

Paul Sloan’s latest Business 2.0 article features last TRAFFIC auction and the people behind the current boom.

In a rare interview, Business 2.0 extends its coverage of the domain name market by profiling Kevin Ham. Kevin Ham was early in the domain dropping business and he’s also the person responsible for the .cm typo wildcard.

The story starts with a scene from the latest TRAFFIC domain name auction in Las Vegas:

Kevin Ham leans forward, sits up tall, closes his eyes, and begins to type — into the air. He’s seated along the rear wall of a packed ballroom in Las Vegas’s Venetian Hotel. Up front, an auctioneer is running through a list of Internet domain names, building excitement the same way he might if vintage cars were on the block…

When Ham wants a domain, he leans over and quietly instructs an associate to bid on his behalf. He likes wedding names, so his guy lifts the white paddle and snags Weddingcatering.com for $10,000. Greeting.com is not nearly as good as the plural Greetings.com, but Ham grabs it anyway, for $350,000.

Ham is a devout Christian, and he spends $31,000 to add Christianrock.com to his collection, which already includes God.com and Satan.com. When it’s all over, Ham strolls to the table near the exit and writes a check for $650,000. It’s a cheap afternoon.

The article also talks about Frank Schilling, Yun Ye, and other famous domain name investors. It also discusses domain valuation and the differing views about pay-per-click multiples and their use for valuation.

A sidebar for “You can still play at home” discusses how people can get involved in the domain name industry. Don’t laugh at the notion that it’s not too late. A Business 2.0 article from a year ago was the impetus for Richard Rosenblatt starting Demand Media. The sidebar mentions NamePros and DomainState as domain name forums and mentions the blogs of Frank Schilling and Rick Schwartz. Both are great domain name blogs, but I’m hurt that Domain Name Wire wasn’t included. Really. But perhaps DNForum also feels left out.

ICANN is seeking a company to escrow registrant data for domain names.

When domain registrar RegisterFly’s crooked activities finally caught up to it, thousands of domain owners were left in no man’s land. They had difficulty transferring their domains to other registrars. Data about owners was lost and it became difficult for domain owners to get control of their domains.

Last week ICANN posted a request for proposal for an escrow agent to hold registrant data in the event of a registrar meltdown. As explained in the RFP:

Through the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) all accredited registrars have agreed to submit to ICANN or an approved escrow agent certain enumerated registration records pursuant to a schedule, format, and terms established by ICANN. Upon termination or expiration without renewal of a registrar’s RAA, the deposited registration records may be used by ICANN to transfer management of the registrations to another registrar…

…Through the RDE program, ICANN seeks to ensure protection of registrants in the event of registrar failure or other termination of a registrar’s accreditation agreement. Through this RFP ICANN seeks to engage an agent to provide RDE services for those registrars who elect not to escrow data with an independent third-party escrow agent.

The full request for proposal can be found here.