ICANN’s decision to liberalize the process for adding new TLDs won’t have much of an affect on you, unless you manage trademarks.

Today ICANN voted to liberalize the process and acceptance of new top level domains (similar to .info and .asia). What does this mean to the average domainer and internet user? Despite the mainstream media sensationalizing this (.sex is coming!), I doubt it will add up to much.

Trademark lawyers will have busy dockets. Depending on how these new TLDs are doled out and the rules tied to them, trademark lawyers will have to register a whole slew of new domain names. Also, companies are going to have to get equivalents (when possible) to their domains in IDN tlds as they are rolled out. Busy times ahead. Managing this is a good business opportunity for those companies that help corporations obtain ccTLDs across the globe.

.Com owners have nothing to worry about. Don’t look for many of these new extensions to take off, and they certainly won’t usurp .com. If nothing else, global confusion will make .com stronger. I don’t understand why the mainstream press keeps predicting we’ll see microsoft.microsoft. Why is that any better than microsoft.com? And if Microsoft were to get cute with my.microsoft, they’d still have to go out and register mymicrosoft.com for protection.

Consumers will be confused. Remember when I saw a billboard advertising att.jobs and did a double take before realizing it was a URL
? You’re going to see a lot more of that.

Alternative TLDs and glorified ccTLDs will be in the tanker. .biz and .info will probably take a hit. I also see glorified ccTLDs, such as .ws and .me (if you fell for that one) falling in value (if there was much value to begin with). .Com and .org will still be strong, and I think .net will be OK as well.

“Landrush” will become a cliche. I’m already tired of seeing ads for a “landrush” for each TLD. Are they seriously advertising .me as a “landrush”? The only domains worth investing in are a few obscene.me domains. With each new TLD that is not a “limited” TLD (the example frequently given is .ibm or .microsoft), we’re going to see ads for a “landrush”. They should just be called “fools gold period”.

All.com domain dispute denied by WIPO panel; forgery claims too much to handle.

A three member WIPO panel has denied a complaint for the domain name All.com, saying the case is outside of UDRP’s scope.

The case involves an alleged sale of the domain name, to which the “buyer” produced documents showing the sale and transfer of money and the “seller” said he knows nothing about.

The complainant purchased the domain name in 2005 when it was registered at GoDaddy. He subsequently obtained a Mexican trademark on it. Then in early 2008 the domain was transferred to a different registrar and the contact information changed to All Ltd Kovalski Selena as registrant and Kovalski Selena (respondent) as Administrative, Technical and Billing Contact. All the contact addresses were shown as “123 South Biscayne Blv 112, Miami Florida 33235, US”. A courier seeking to deliver a copy of the complaint reported that this was an incorrect and inadequate address.

That’s when the case gets interesting.

The respondent, represented by Traverse Legal, claimed that she financed the domain purchase originally and the complainant had agreed to sell it to her later for $80,000. The Respondent gave evidence in the form of correspondence in 2005 under which the seller agreed to transfer to her for $80,000, of which $40,000 was said to have been paid in 2005. The document provided:

“Immediately upon delivery of Full Payment, Seller will take any actions that may be necessary or desirable to protect and perfect Purchaser’s title to the Property, including but not limited to, authorizing the change of registered ownership of the Domain Name with InterNic or other authorized entity.”

The respondent said she paid the balance in January 2008.

The complainant alleged it was a forgery, and hired handwriting experts to provide opinions.

This is one case you can expect to head to the court of law.

RulesofSaving.com, registered by a Connecticut man yesterday, pushes company over milestone.

A tip of the hat to GoDaddy Group, which runs GoDaddy.com, Wild West Domains, and Blue Razor, for crossing the 30 million domains registered mark. This number appears to reflect the total number of domains currently registered. Given expirations, that means GoDaddy has registered a lot more domains than that over its lifetime.

According to RegistrarStats.com, GoDaddy.com has around 26 million domains registered and Wild West Domains, its reseller program, counts over 3 million domains.

Demand Media’s Enom, also known for its strong reseller program, is the second largest domain registrar with 9 million domains registered. (RegistrarStats is a service of Enom).

When you consider it was just a decade ago that Network Solutions lost its monopoly on domain name registrations, it’s impressive to see the amount of competition. Network Solutions is now in third place. Register.com, another early entrant in the business, has fewer than 3 million domains registered. Both Network Solutions and Register.com focus on the business market and have significantly higher registration fees than most registrars.

GoDaddy’s keys to success? I’d have to say aggressive pricing and marketing.

A look at a common affliction among domainers.

Thousands of people suffer daily from Repetitive Statistics Syndrome (RSS). RSS is an obsessive compulsive disorder that involves checking revenue statistics from programs such as Google Adsense and domain parking multiple times a day. RSS sufferers know that checking their statistics repeatedly will not increase the final revenue number at the end of the day, but they can’t bring themselves to stop checking stats. This article will discuss RSS and what can be done about it.

History of RSS. RSS began with early incarnations of public e-mail services such as AOL and Prodigy. People who were new to e-mail would check their accounts multiple times each hour to make sure they quickly knew if one of their friends had forwarded a funny picture of a cat to them or if they needed to send out a chain letter to 7 people in order to stave off bad luck. This was called RES for Repetitive Email Syndrome.

In the late 90s, RSS took form and started afflicting internet marketers and publishers. They would log into their web statistics programs to see how many hits they had that day. Later, they realized that hits didn’t mean anything. But when affiliate programs and later Google Adsense hit the scene, RSS exploded.

Current Issues. Today, RSS is an issue the nation is just beginning to wake up to. “Domainers” often times log into Google Adsense and three different domain parking company sites throughout the day to see how many clicks at 3 to 17 cents they’ve received. Logging in doesn’t improve their stats, but RSS sufferers start to feel lonely and depressed if they don’t have up-to-the-minute stats.

Remedies and Help. Thankfully, psychiatric organizations and drug manufacturers are starting to address the problem. For Repetitive E-mail Syndrome, Research in Motion released the Blackberry. Unfortunately, this just exacerbated the problem. Therapists advise domainers and internet marketers not to download applets that log-in to parking accounts automatically to pull statistics as this is similar to having “a Crackberry for stats”.

Pfizer is filing a patent to use a new form of Zoloft to treat RSS. There are self-support groups on the web that try to pry people away from domain name forums where people obsess about their revenue “being off two dollars today from this time yesterday”. Unfortunately, these self help groups exist on the actual domain forums.

If you or someone you know suffers from RSS, please, get help.

Lawyer defends Gregory Ricks on Decal.com, wins RDNH charge.

Domain name lawyer John Berryhill has successfully defended famed domainer Gregory Rick’s Decal.com domain name, as well as getting a charge of reverse domain name hijacking against Italian company Decal (Depositi Costieri Calliope).

The decision, handed down on June 11 and just posted online, details an egregious attempt by the Italian company to steal a generic domain name that wasn’t used in an infringing manner. The domain name Decal.com is hosted on a Domain Sponsor parked page and only shows ads related to the common definition of decals, or stickers.

The panel railed against Decal for it attempt and said it was misguided and that its case was “fatally weak”. As to Ricks having “no rights or legitimate interests” in the domain name, the panel wrote “The Complaint however is misconceived in relation to this second element of the Policy…In this case, it is plain that the disputed domain name has a descriptive or “generic” meaning in English, and that the Respondent is based in an English-speaking jurisdiction (the United States of America)”.

As part of its evidence that the registrant should have known about the trademark for “Decal” when the domain was registered, Decal attached a printout of a Google search that shows the complainant in the first position for a related search term. The domain was registered over 12 years ago. As the panel points out, Google wasn’t even around then.

In finding Decal guilty of reverse domain name hijacking, the panel wrote:

The Panel makes its findings of reverse domain name hijacking for similar reasons. The Complainant should have known its case was fatally weak, in relation to the second and third elements of the Policy. It seems plain that the Complainant, had it properly understood what was required, would have understood that it could not make its case.

The Respondent has a long-standing registration of a domain name with a generic meaning, and uses it in that connection. This is evident from the nature of the Respondent’s website. The Complainant lacked any credible evidence of bad faith registration and use of the domain name.

Moreover, it is significant that the disputed domain name was registered before the Complainant acquired registered trademark rights.

[Editor's note: Perhaps most shameful, Decal was represented by Landwell-PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of Spain, a recognized international firm. Also, I own RDNH.com. Perhaps it's time to make a repository of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking cases?]