Company files for arbitration on two domain names related to “The Tonight Show”.

Just a few weeks after Jay Leno filed for arbitration to get several domain names related to his TV show, NBC has filed for arbitration on two domain names related to The Tonight Show. Leno is stepping aside from his role on The Tonight Show for his new show, and Conan O’Brien is taking over as host.

NBC has filed two separate arbitration cases with World Intellectual Property Organization for TonightShow.com and TheTonightShow.com. It’s no wonder the company wants these domain names; its current domain for the show is tonightshowwithconanobrien.com.

Ownership information for TonightShow.com is protected by whois privacy; the last available record shows a man in Turkey. The domain is parked and shows ads for “The Jay Leno Show” and “Jay Leno Tickets”.

TheTonightShow.com is registered to a Florida man. It is also parked and shows links to “Jay Leno” and former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson.

The return of domain name tasting?

Demand Media, parent company of eNom, has been awarded United States Patent 7539774 for “Method for domain name registration and a corresponding apparatus”.

The patent application was filed in 2005 and appears to be targeted toward domain monetization of low traffic domains. The idea would be for the registry, such as VeriSign (NSDQ: VRSN), to offer domain registrations at different prices but with different rights. For example, there could be three tiers:

Tier 1 – a standard domain registration as it exists today. You have full control of the domain and full rights until expiration. This would be charged full price by the registry, say $7.00.

Tier 2 – you’d have rights to the domain name unless someone comes along and offers to register it under tier 1. You may have full rights to control the domain, or you may be limited to making certain changes such as DNS. You would pay a lower amount to the registry, such as $4.00.

Tier 3 – similar to tier 2, but with fewer rights. For example, someone may come along and register the domain at tier 2 or tier 1 and you would no longer have rights to the domain. This tier would cost less, perhaps $2.00 per year.

Each tier may also have different “add grace period” limits that give you longer to taste the domain. (Keep in mind the patent was filed prior to ICANN effectively eliminating domain tasting.) Now that ICANN has quashed domain tasting, Demand Media’s system could be used to create a new type of tasting. For example, VeriSign could offer a registration option for 1 cent per domain, with additional fees if a registrant decides to fully control the domain.

The underlying idea of the patent is that some domains may not earn $7.00 per year in pay-per-click income, but may earn $3.00. In this case the domain probably goes unused, but under the proposed system someone could register it at tier 3. The registrant and registry would make money. If someone later decided they wanted to the domain for a web site, they could register it under tier 1. Or, if earnings on the domain suddenly increased the tier 3 registrant could upgrade to tier 1. And, as I pointed out previously, this idea could now be used to bring back a form of domain tasting. It will also be interesting to see if Demand Media tries to apply this scheme to the new top level domains it plans to launch.

You can read the patent here.

Could move foreshadow image ads on parked pages?

Today Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that it will start adding relevant banner ads to the bottom of link ad results pages.

Link ads are part of the Google Adsense program. Instead of showing ads that link directly to an advertiser’s site, a link unit includes keywords that link to a page full of Google ads.

The banners are shown at the bottom of these ad pages:

Google says that it found revenue increases when adding the image ads, which means that a combination of text and image ads produces higher revenue than text ads alone. That begs the question, will this soon be applied to parked domain names, too?

Google Adsense for Domains uses pages that look very similar to link unit results pages. It will also be interesting to see if Google starts to syndicate its image ads to it partner parking companies. Google restricts which types of ads these partners can show, but it may wish to insert its own image ads to boost overall revenue.

Auction page now easier to scan.

One thing has always baffled me about the auction page at Sedo: domain names were truncated at 13 characters even though there was plenty of space to list the entire domain. Like many things in web applications, fixing this was a challenge due to some legacy backend systems. But I’m happy to report that Sedo has fixed the glitch and most domains are no longer truncated:

A quick review of current auctions shows only a couple truncated listings, whereas before it seemed that nearly half of the domains were truncated. Before this adjustment you would find a domain that looked interesting and then hover your mouse over it to see what the domain really was. (Often times it was in a TLD you wouldn’t care for or included an entire extra word that wasn’t apparent.)

Arbitration panel finds Parker Waichman Alonso LLP overstepping its bounds.

New York law firm Parker Waichman Alonso LLP has two registered trademarks that include the term “YourLawyer”: yourlawyer.com on the principal register and YourLawyer on the supplemental register. It’s trying to make a land grab online for domains that include “YourLawyer” in them.

The law firm just lost a case at National Arbitration Forum for the domain YourLawyer.tv, which is used by a Florida law firm. From the outset it was fairly clear that Parker Waichman couldn’t prove the registrant lacked rights or legitimate interests in the domain and that it was registered and used in bad faith. It was registered before Parker Waichman’s trademarks, and the respondent was clearly using it based on the general term “your lawyer”. But when the respondent asked the arbitration panel for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking, Parker Waichman got down-right feisty, responding that this request was:

“clearly outrageous” and “a personal attack upon our firm’s reputation throughout the internet community and the public at large to which penalties and/or sanctions should be considered for imposition directly against Respondent herein.”

The panel found against Park Waichman, but declined to find it guilty of reverse domain name hijacking (although it “does not consider Respondent’s accusation of reverse domain hijacking to be “outrageous” or a “personal attack”).

Parker Waichman Alonso is also going after an individual lawyer who uses the domain name arnoldpolitzer-yourlawyer.com. The case is pending.

Although the arbitrator found in favor of the respondent for UDRP claims 2 and 3, he found that YourLawyer.tv was confusingly similar to the YourLawyer.com trademark. The arbitrator said it wouldn’t find it similar to the YourLawyer mark because that mark is on the supplemental register, but wrote:

The question, therefore, is whether the disputed domain name, yourlawyer.tv, is confusingly similar to Complainant’s registered mark, yourlawyer.com.

Although the phrase “your lawyer” is certainly descriptive of legal services, it does represent the more distinctive component of Complainant’s mark, and it is incorporated in its entirety in the disputed domain name. The addition of a top-level domain such as “.tv,” whether it represents a country code or a generic term such as “television,” does not sufficiently distinguish the domain name from the corresponding trademark.

With this reasoning, anyone who trademarks a .com domain name (or any other TLD) can claim that a another TLD is “confusingly similar”.