War for parked domains escalates.

Happy Leap Day! Here’s some domain name news you can use…

Adam Strong wonders “If I register domains today does that mean I don’t have a renewal date for next year ? Do I get 4 years for the price of 1.” Good question, Adam…

…Domain parking service DomainSponsor announced a promotion for March. New clients will automatically receive a 20% bonus on their March payouts for all domains transferred to DomainSponsor. Existing clients can also receive a 20% bonus on the March commissions for newly transferred names as long as their total March average daily traffic and revenue is 20% higher than their February average daily totals. Existing clients must sign up to be eligible. If you haven’t tried the service yet, now might be a good opportunity to give it a one month test run.

As competition intensifies, you can expect to see more bonus offers like this. Growth from customers who have never parked their domains before is virtually non-existent, so the parking companies must compete for each others’ clients…

…Today is the last day of Ask.com’s Google sub-syndication feed. This will affect a number of parking services that used the feed. Parked.com uses it for traffic it can’t monetize with Yahoo’s feed. Not coincidentally, Skenzo announced yesterday that it has inked an ad deal with Yahoo.

Sale to data recovery firm is biggest of the year.

[Updated 9:49AM CST] ESS Data Recovery has purchased the domain name DataRecovery.com for $1.659 million, confirms company President Ben Carmitchel.

The sale marks the biggest reported sale of the year and shows the promise of a targeted, generic domain name.

The seller is competitor Associated Computers, Inc. of Minnesota. Carmitchel confirmed that the transfer took place on February 1, 2008.

In a phone interview this morning, Carmitchel said he’s been working on buying the domain for a long time.

“I’ve been working on it for 5 or 6 years,” said Carmitchel. “I’ve known [the previous owner] for a long time. He wanted to sell it but he wouldn’t let it go for chump change.”

Although the domain wasn’t cheap, it is already proving its value. “To us it’s definitely worth that amount and it has already proven its worth,” said Carmitchel. “We’ve already had a lot of direct traffic.”

The company used to spend $10,000-$12,000 a month on pay-per-click, but found it difficult to get a good return. The Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Tool has an estimated $13.83 - $20.74 per click to be in positions 1-3 for the term “data recovery”, with a total cost of $3,820 - $7,210 per day.

But it’s not just customer lead generation that makes up the domain’s value. It’s the name recognition and simplicity.

“Our customers will be able to easily recognize us,” explained Carmitchel. “We can tell them ‘just go to datarecovery.com’ rather than e-s-s-data-recovery. It makes the whole process a lot smoother for the customer.”

The company took out a loan to pay for the all cash transaction that did not involve any transfer of customers or business from the prior owner. When comparing the loan payments to the increased business, Carmitchel said the return on investment is easy to prove.

ESS Data Recovery provides data recovery services. The company has 23 employees.

Domain registrar spends big bucks to lobby on capitol hill.

Domain registrar GoDaddy.com spent $580,000 in federal lobbying last year, according to data obtained by Domain Name Wire from the Center for Responsive Politics. This is up from $460,000 spent in 2006.

GoDaddy set up a full time presence in Washington D.C. by the fall of 2006. In general, GoDaddy’s efforts in Washington appear to by pro-domainer, including testifying against VeriSign’s price increases. According to the company’s self-reported lobbying reports, its lobbying activity included computers & information technology, copyright & trademark, telecommunications, law enforcement, pharmacy, and consumer product safety. Your guess is as good as mine about the pharmacy issue, but it may have involved domain names that include drugs or online pharmacies.

Internet Commerce Association (ICA), a lobbying group that protects the rights of domain name owners, spent $200,000 in 2007. Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) spent $80,000, but I suspect that number will be dramatically higher this year. While ICA is backed by relatively small companies and individuals, CADNA taps into the pocket books of Fortune 500 companies such as Dell and Verizon.

.Com and .net registry operator VeriSign (VRSN) has not filed its annual lobbying report for 2007. It spent $570,000 on lobbying in the first half of 2007. [Updated 3-6-08: It appears VeriSign’s total tab for the year was about 1.7M]

Registrar Network Solutions spent $20,000 in lobbying during the first half of 2007 and hasn’t filed its second half report.

Tucows wins UDRP decision for Batchelor.com.

Domain registrar Tucows has successfully defended against an arbitration proceeding over the domain name Batchelor.com, which the registrar acquired with its NetIdentity purchase. NetIdentity holds nearly 40,000 surnames and offers email addresses at those names, such as tom@lastname.com.

The complaint was filed by Ken Batchelor Cadillac Company, a car dealership in San Antonio, Texas. The National Arbitration Forum panel determined that Batchelor Cadillac did not establish rights in the mark “Batchelor”. Establishment of rights to the mark is one of three requirements to win a UDRP. The complainant must also show that the registrant had no rights or legitimate interest in the name and the domain was been registered in bad faith. The panel did not weigh in on the latter two because of the lack of trademark.

Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domain Portfolio at Tucows, said he was surprised this case was brought forth. “In this particular case I’m surprised the National Arbitration Forum took it” because the complainant admitted it didn’t have rights in the mark “Batchelor”, said Sweetman. In its filing, Ken Batchelor Cadillac Company asserted common law trademark for “Ken Batchelor Cadillac Company”.

“I think the folks that run that car dealership should see if they’ve been taken for a ride” for fees by their representative, said Sweetman. The car dealership was represented by Jeffrey S. Zehnder, of Zehnder Communications, a communications and advertising firm. Bret Fausett of Cathcart Collins, LLP represented Tucows.

Zehnder, who stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of the dealership, told Domain Name Wire “We feel like we had a viable case to make. Our customers’ tendency is to type “Batchelor.com” into their address bar because that’s how they would likely search to find us.” He referred to another case won by parent company Sewell Automotive for the domain SewellCadillac.com. Acknowledging the difference, Zehnder said “Certainly our case would have been strengthened if it was BatchelorCadillac.com.”

Stephen Tolerico, VP of Marketing at Sewell Automotive said, “We are obviously disappointed with the decision.”

Sweetman said Tucows has won every surname UDRP it has responded to.

Batchelor Cadillac is not well known outside the areas of its car dealerships. A search for “Batchelor” on Google did not return the car dealership on the first page, but did turn up other people with the same last name.

It is unlikely that the panel would have found confusion even if Batchelor Cadillac did have trademark rights. The landing page at Batchelor.com does not have ads related to car sales.

Sweetman says Tucows does not sell domains from its NetIdentity portfolio. “If we were to sell one of those domains, not only do we sell the business value associated with the surname, but it hurts the overall portfolio,” said Sweetman. “The moment you pull one of those diamonds out of the necklace, the whole necklace loses value. It’s different from a portfolio of generic domains. You don’t think twice about selling one of those for the right price.”

Sedo and Moniker auctions end today.

Sedo’s February Great Domains auction and Moniker’s TRAFFIC silent auction both end today. Will the industry be cheering at the end of the day, or will the results be a dissapointment? Pressure is on both companies to perform.

Sedo’s auctions start ending at 2PM EST today. Sedo is under pressure to perform after its GeoDomains auction. The GeoDomains auction attracted noteworthy bids, but few domains hit their reserves. If my stats are correct, the highest sale in that auction was about $50,000.

So far its auction is getting good bids, but the question remains if any of the expensive domains will hit their reserves. As of 9:30AM EST today, the highest domain to have hit its reserve is Eggs.com at $52,560 with 26 bids.

Equipment.com is at $151,000, well below its reserve of $200,000-$500,000. Other domains and their current status include:

Annuaire.com EUR 60,000 - reserve not met
Backhoe.com $36,000 - reserve not met
Los.com $31,000 - reserve not met
Appartment.com (typo) $31,000 - reserve met
DVDburner.com $25,000 - reserve not met
Cellulitis.com $20,200 - reserve met
Boston.net $20,000 - reserve not met
ddp.com $17,500 - reserve met

Although it’s not in the auction ending today, Sedo has garnered a bid of $100,000 for c4.com. That auction ends March 4.

The silent auction for last week’s TRAFFIC conference also ends today. Bidding takes place on Moniker’s platform at silentauction.moniker.com. Bids are starting to roll in, with StorageFacility.com at $5,000, ConversionKits.com at $1,770, and SierraMadre.com at $1,760.