One of the questions I often hear about Sedo is how it is pronounced. I’ve always said See-Dough.

So when I was at the SedoPro conference in Key West earlier this month, I was delighted to hear Sedo CEO Tim Schumaker pronounce the company as see-dough as well. Case closed.

But then in a session the next day Sedo Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel Jeremiah Johnston kept referring to the company as “Say-Dough”.

Someone in the audience asked: which is it, see or say? Well, the folks at Sedo can’t decide.

Last week I caught up with Johnston and asked him what the story behind the pronunciation is. He said the origin of the say-dough pronunciation is that the ‘s’ is pronounced more like a ‘z’ in Germany. So it was the company’s thinking that when Sedo opened up U.S. operations it would be called Say-Dough U.S. But then the company noticed people calling it see-dough in the states.

Of course, that makes it hard to understand why a German like Schumaker pronounces it see-dough. Johnston said that’s probably because he spent so much time in the U.S. with the company.

Bottom line: you can pronounce it either way. I’m sticking with see-dough.

New service from Directi could boost industry.

Every once in a while you see a new product hit the domain name market that you really want to see succeed. DomainAdvertising.com from Directi is one of those.

DomainAdvertising.com has the potential to bring more advertising dollars to the domain traffic market. It is the first service I know of that will evangelize the value of domain traffic to advertisers. We all know that we can’t count on Google and Yahoo to do that.

The company offers a high touch service for advertisers to help them maximize the value they can get from the domain channel. That includes buying parked domain clicks from existing networks and directly from domain owners, leasing domain traffic, and buying domain redirects.

So what does that mean for domainers? I asked Alap Ghosh, VP – Strategy and Business Development, to break it down:

We’re a traffic monetization program for domain owners. They will park their domains with us and we will then use our advertising network relationships to maximize the revenue earned on traffic from the domains. The traffic will be sold in different inventory models and using different media formats, optimized for the traffic that we receive. We will also selectively bring services like domain leasing and domain brokering among others. Our focus is to directly evangelize the domain medium to advertisers and help them buy traffic. We believe that of all the online advertising mediums available today, domains bring the best return on ad investments. Advertisers, in turn, have given us a great response and we already have over 120 networks joined up.

Many claims in Sendori’s patent applications are denied.

Sendori, a domain name advertising service acquired by IAC in January, has hit some major roadblocks on patents it filed.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has sent a final notice of rejection (pdf) on a number of claims in Sendori’s application for “Domain Name Marketplace”, publication number 20080189192. It has also rejected a few of the claims in “Electronic Marketplace Used to Lease Domain Names and Redirect Web Surfers from Leased Domain Names”, publication number 20070260518.

Sendori provides a marketplace where advertisers can bid on redirects from domain names. For example, an advertiser that operates a video game store online could buy redirects from VideoGames.com.

The major issue Sendori is hitting is that the basic concept of its business was the same as a shuttered Advertising.com service called VisitorBid. When Sendori had its coming out party several years ago, I remember asking Sendori founder Ofer Ronen how his service was different from the one Advertising.com shuttered. He explained that it integrated better with domain owners’ portfolios (e.g., offering an API). That was probably the case, but trying to patent all aspects of the service should certainly be met with resistance.

Sendori still has a chance to reply to the final rejection.

Web site company apparently doesn’t understand domain names.

An Australian web site development company, Bwired Group Pty Ltd, has failed in its attempt to get the domain name Bwired.com through arbitration — and was found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

There are two interesting things about this case. First, it shows that companies can’t rely on their country code domain name alone — they still need .com. Bwired uses bwired.com.au as its domain. As Bwired suggested in its complaint:

Customers would expect [bwired.com] to be owned by it, particularly as it owns the corresponding domain name bwired.com.au. The Complainant points out that if a person attempting to access its domain name omitted the .au top level domain, he would be directed to the Respondent’s website.

I see this all the time — companies belatedly getting the .com to accompany their country code domain name. This is especially the case when the country code domain uses .com.cc or something similar.

Second is how ridiculous a company looks when it tries to hijack a domain name. Here was Bwired’s rationale as it tried to persuade the panel that it should get the domain. As you read this, consider that bwired.com was registered two years prior to Bwired being founded:

The Complainant alleges that the Respondent acted in bad faith in registering and using the Domain Name. The Complainant points out that the Respondent owns a considerable number of domain names which resolve to the same website and observes that the Respondent clearly registers domain names with the sole purpose of selling them to the trademark owner. The Complainant asserts that “bwired” is a distinctive word which is not in use in the English language and which would not have been legitimately chosen by the Respondent for use as part of the Domain Name. The Complainant infers that the Domain Name was registered with the sole purpose of sale to the Complainant or one of its competitors.

As John Berryhill would point out, Bwired is making an assumption that the owner of the domain is psychic.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking against Bwired, the arbitrator wrote:

The Panel considers that this allegation was made recklessly without any proper consideration of the information in the Complainant’s possession, let alone further information readily available on the Internet.

Frustration, anger greets session on new top level domain names.

In the opening session on new gTLDs at ICANN’s meeting in Seoul, frustrations boiled over after it became apparent the timeline for introduction of new top level domain names has slipped.

Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President at ICANN, led the session. The transcript tells an ugly tale. Pritz didn’t talk about specific dates, but basically said things would be slowed down to get it right. One example:

The RSSAC are considering the reports that have been delivered and will advise the board on next steps there. Economic analyses we’re engaged with, in discussions with economists that we expect to retain. We expect a first delivery of materials in — as early as December, and then the follow-on report in the first quarter or first half of next year.

When the floor was opened up for questions, Minds+Machines’ Antony Van Couvering was the first to the mic:

>>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Thank you, Kurt. And thank you for the 50 explanatory memos, the 400 days of public comments, the 580 articles and so on.

So I have done the math. I think everyone here can do it, too. Andwhat that math says to me is that there is no application period before the end of the summer, and probably after that.

>>KURT PRITZ: Summer in which hemisphere?

>>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Yes, exactly. Let us say, then, July, August, September, October in any hemisphere….

Frustration became evident as person after person came to the mic to discuss the costs they are experiencing with delays. Here are a few examples:

Paul Stahura, eNom: We need new gTLDs or the DNS risks losing its relevance and ICANN simply devolving into a perpetual debating society. We need new gTLDs to bring lower prices, better names, more diverse services, and innovative features to consumers. We need them now, or those of us who want to bring these benefits to consumers will wither on the vine, and as we all know, some of you in this room wish this to happen.

Elaine Pruis, Minds+Machines: Yesterday, I heard of a draft applicant guidebook 4, maybe a 5, maybe a 6. And I couldn’t help but think of Buzz Lightyear. And I want a tee shirt that says, “To infinity and beyond.” Not really. I want a tee shirt that says, “Final applicant guidebook.”

John Toland, TLD Assets: My clients are concerned that the timetable hasn’t slipped, but has been abandoned. So I would be seeking to hear from yourself — this is a question — a clear reaffirmation that the new gTLDs are going to be introduced. So could you answer that with a “yes”? (After back and forth with Pritz, Toland took it as a ‘yes’)

Bret Fausett, Attorney: You know, there are people who are burning money trying to build businesses on this ICANN platform, and it’s very difficult when you don’t know what the target is. And, you know, if it’s 2011, if it’s 2012, people are going to be really disappointed to hear that, but they’d rather hear that.

And, you know, don’t be worried about making people disappointed, because predictability and planning are much more important than making people happy.

Bhavin Turakhia, Directi: Every year of delay means people change. People in the governments changing, employees and staff and private equity payers are changing, staff has to be reeducated. Anywhere between 70 to 100 potential applicants exist today, and people who I talk to speak of a couple hundred applications. You’re looking at a staff of three to six dedicated people in each of these companies. That represents anywhere between 45 to $50 million per annum of staff cost. You add all of this up, add interest cost and you’re looking at about $100 million outside of the 92 that your cost consideration sheet talks about, that is being spent for every year of delay in this process.

Which means the ecosystem is going to have to generate an additional $100 million every year that this process is delayed. So, you know, I urge you, if you take a look at this room, you know, this is probably — I’ve been to several ICANN meetings — this is probably, you know, the most packed I have seen any session in an ICANN meeting, close to 400, 500 people here at a modest, $300 an hour. This room has spent $250,000 in this session to hear you say that the process is getting delayed.