Worst UDRP decision ever? Company says Ta Ta to WIPO.

An Indian company is taking a domain battle to court after a WIPO domain panelist handed its domain owner to conglomerate TaTa Sons.

The domain at issue is OKTaTaByeBye.com, a travel web site based on the colloquial saying “Ta Ta”, as in bye-bye or see you later.

OKTaTaByeBye.com is run by a large online travel company that operates MakeMyTrip.com.

TaTa Sons stated in its complaint that “the Respondent has not shown any demonstrable preparation to use the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods and services.”

OKTaTaByeBye refuted that in its response, stating that the site is a travel journal and community site. A look at historical DomainTools thumbnails shows that the site has been operating since at least 2006 with active traveler discussion boards.

But the response by WIPO panelist Pavan Duggal is almost humorous in nature. Despite the overwhelming evidence presented by OKTaTaByeBye.com that it is a legitimate, online travel community, Duggal focuses on on how the site links back to the company’s MakeMyTrip.com site, where people can book trips online. This, according to Duggal, shows that OKTaTaByeBye.com is actually trying to use TaTa’s trademark to “fish” for new customers to its MakeMyTrip.com site. Apparently operating an online travel community that supports a related web site is not OK.

The company is discussing the fight on its blog in a post that has received 1,256 comments.

The missing piece of the puzzle glues it all together.

When domain auction platform Bido announced its “Bido Guarantee Program”, I was a bit confused as to why any buyers would participate. Essentially, buyers would participate in a pre-auction where they could bid for domains. The seller could choose to accept the winning bid in the pre-auction, send the auction to a “real” auction with the pre-auction bid as the starting bid, or walk away.

This didn’t sound too appealing to pre-auction buyers. They would essentially bid up the prices of domains, only to face more competition in the real auction.

But there’s one detail that wasn’t in Bido’s original explanation: pre-auction winners get a cut of the commission if they don’t end up winning the “real auction”.

Let’s say I’m a bidder in the guarantee program. In the pre-auction I win with a bid of $500 for a domain. The seller decides to send it to a real auction and the domain sells for $1,000 to someone else. That means I’d get 50% of the total commission (4% of the sales price), or $40. It would give me an incentive to bid high in the pre-auction (let alone participate at all). This should push domain sales prices higher on Bido.

My only worry, as I’ve discussed before, is that this makes things more complicated. But I think it’s a nifty addition to Bido.

Current guarantee bidders include NameMedia, Parked, Domaining, Reinvent, and several other companies.

Yahoo is first major tech company to try to get .tel domain name through domain arbitration.

Yahoo has filed for arbitration with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name Yahoo.tel. Yahoo is the first major tech company to try to get its hands on a .tel domain name through arbitration. Many other tech companies, including Google, registered their .tel domain names during the so-called “sunrise period” for about $300. Arbitration will cost the company about $1,500 plus legal fees.

.Tel is a different kind of domain name designed as a business card on the web. Information is stored in the DNS, and .tel domains cannot be developed into standard web sites.

Yahoo.tel is registered to a man in Spain and includes links to his blog and an association he is president of.

Virginia man allegedly pays himself by selling domains to his employer.

Justin Godfrey, founder of domain name escrow service EscrowDNS, began to think something was wrong.

Joshua Everett, an e-commerce manager with Lumber Liquidators, started doing a lot of business through EscrowDNS.com in November 2008. He purchased a number of domains on behalf of Lumber Liquidators. At first he purchased them from a company called DNS Investing. Later, a company called Delorean Law Group signed up for an account at EscrowDNS and started selling domains to Lumber Liquidators as well.

Oddly, many of the domains Everett was buying for Lumber Liquidators were recently registered typos of Lumber Liquidator’s trademarks. Then, when EscrowDNS sent out a promotional letter to Delorean Law Group, it was returned “No such address”.

Godfrey decided he should look into the company. He worked with his other company, DNinvestigation, to research Delorean.

Using historical whois, the company found an address for Delorean’s domain name that matched that of DNS Investing, linking the two companies together. As a result, Godfrey then believed that the companies were operated by the same person and were potentially set up for the purpose of selling domains to Lumber Liquidators.

Godfrey requested copies of the canceled checks that were sent to both companies. They were signed by the people who set up accounts for each company: Lisa Mendoza and (redacted) Grace. One of Godfrey’s employees then stumbled upon a blog written by Everett’s wife, Lisa. On the blog, Lisa wrote about their daughter (redacted). Then it clicked. Godfrey suspected Everett, the Lumber Liquidators employee, was purchasing domain names from himself with Lumber Liquidators’ funds. He believed Everett used his wife’s and daughter’s names as the contacts for the companies he set up.

In the mean time, Everett was on a buying spree. His wife’s blog chronicled big purchases, including a new home complete with fine leather sofas and flat panel TVs.

But in an instant this past March, everything changed. With much consternation, Godfrey contacted Lumber Liquidators and told them what he had discovered. (Lumber Liquidators declined to comment for this story.)

Everett was arrested on August 17 by James County police for obtaining money by false pretenses, a felony. He is now free on bail. All told, EscrowDNS paid out more than $100,000 to DNS Investing and Delorean Law Group for domain transactions.

Everett’s wife has started a new blog about picking up the pieces. She says she feels betrayed, but is trying to move on.

With every step of his company’s investigation, Godfrey’s heart churned. “By all accounts, Mr. Everett was a stand up guy,” said Godfrey. “I did everything to steer the suspicions away from him as I had created a personal bond with him over time, but the evidence was simply overwhelming. It took a lot of inner strength for me to call Lumber Liquidators. Though it did hurt for me to turn him in, since he has a small child, I knew it was the right thing to do.”

Godfrey recalls his days in the Air Force, when he was taught “Integrity First”, a motto he still tries to live by today. In a statement released to Domain Name Wire, Godfrey wrote:

“We take our customers’ security very seriously at EscrowDNS and we simply cannot facilitate these types of activities. I wish the best to Mr. Everett and his family, and hopefully there are lessons to be learned by everyone involved.”

.Cm auctions should finally start today at NameJet.

After many delays, NameJet will begin auctions today for .cm domain names.

NameJet General Manager Steve Brown informed Domain Name Wire this morning that the sunrise and single pre-order .cm domains have now been added to the zone. Therefore, NameJet will proceed as planned with the auctions that will begin later today and close between Monday August 31st and Monday September 14th.

General registrations for .cm continue to be delayed, much to the chagrin of a number of people lined up to register them.

.Cm is the country code domain name for Cameroon. The domain was made famous thanks to a deal struck by Kevin Ham and the government of Cameroon to “wildcard” any .cm domain that didn’t resolve and forward it to a parked page. This year Cameroon is opening .cm for general registration. The launch has been mired in controversy because .cm is a common typo of .com and due to technical problems at the .cm registry.