Healthcare company loses arbitration for domain name.

Healthcare giant Novo Nordisk has lost a dispute over the domain name FlexTouch.com.

Novo Nordisk filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization to get the domain name based on its 2008 and 2009 trademark filings for “FlexTouch”. The current domain owner acquired the domain name after the trademarks were filed.

Novo Nordisk argued that the respondent was a “professional domainer” who should have searched for existing trademarks before acquiring the domain name. However, the company has not yet started using the FlexTouch mark in commerce. As the respondent pointed out in the case, the term “FlexTouch” is generic and is commonly associated with computing. Indeed, a Google search for “FlexTouch” returns a number of technical uses. A parking page at FlexTouch.com only included links to electronics and computers, not health care.

The WIPO panel found that the domain was not registered in bad faith:

The Complainant did not provide any evidence that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name with knowledge of the Complainant’s rights in the term “flextouch”. The Complainant itself submits that it has not used its FLEXTOUCH Marks actively in commerce so far, but merely intends to use the FLEXTOUCH Marks for pharmaceutical preparations for the treatment of diabetes. The Complainant neither provided any evidence that it promoted its FLEXTOUCH product in any way nor listed any other circumstances supporting the assumption that the Respondent must have been aware of the Complainant and its rights in the term “flextouch” at the time of the registration of the disputed domain name. The Respondent, in turn, provided evidence of substantial third parties’ use of the terms “flex touch” and “flexible touch” in connection with various products. As far as this Panel is aware, he has not been found to infringe the Policy in an earlier proceeding.

Panelist Brigitte Joppich also noted:

…the registration of domain names because of their attraction as generic terms is a business model permitted under the Policy, and there is no general obligation under the Policy to conduct searches in order to find out whether a domain name might infringe third parties’ rights.

Domain name registrar is third to meet 10 million domain milestone.

Tucows Inc. announced today that it hit a major milestone: 10 million domain names under management. The company credits its OpenSRS reseller network for hitting the milestone. The reseller network includes 10,000 web hosting companies, ISPs, Internet consultants, and other service providers in over 100 countries.

At the end of December 2008, the company topped 7 million domain names and surpassed Network Solutions as it migrated domains from the Its Your Domain acquisition on to its platform. In November 2009 — the most recent public report at ICANN — Tucows had about 6.5 million .com and .net domain names registered.

RegistrarStats.com still shows Tucows Inc. having fewer than 8 million domain names, so some of the domain names must be under a different registrar name or RegistrarStats isn’t counting correctly.

In terms of the biggest registrars, Tucows trails only eNom and Go Daddy. Go Daddy recently topped the 40 million domain milestone.

Another blockbuster sale as Files.com sells for $725,000.

Sedo’s latest domain name sales report includes another spectacular sale: Files.com for $725,000. The current owner is Startive Capital Pty Ltd of Australia, but it has been listed as the whois contact for the domain name since December. The prior whois is for Domain Capital.

So when did it actually sell? Sedo would not confirm when it sold, citing confidentiality about the details of the deal. Nevertheless, it’s another notch for Sedo, which has solidified its position as king of closing blockbuster domain name deals.

Sedo also sold Prize.com for $100,000. Prize.com’s whois record has been private for several years, but the web site recently changed from a parked page to Dutch language gaming site.

Here are other notable sales for the week:

.com
kip.com 80,000 USD
hba.com 30,000 USD
classicgames.com 25,000 USD
tumescent.com 15,000 USD
vakanties.com 12,500 EUR
xprs.com 10,000 USD
yump.com 10,000 EUR
bravogames.com 10,000 EUR
psd2css.com 9,999 USD
casinocasino.com 7,000 USD
cece.com 6,900 USD
muslimlifestyle.com 6,000 USD
4club.com 5,988 USD
sanma.com 5,800 USD
biotherapie.com 5,000 EUR
jeucasino.com 5,000 USD
jobfriends.com 5,000 EUR
domainsamurai.com 5,000 USD
gtti.com 5,000 USD
browser-games.com 4,695 EUR

ccTLDs
onlinecasino.se 32,000 USD
mum.co.uk 20,000 GBP
italy.tv 19,000 USD
giappone.it 8,700 EUR
helped.co.uk 7,500 GBP
contact.be 6,100 EUR
glueckskekse.de 6,000 EUR
skis.eu 5,500 USD
reise-report.de 5,000 EUR
allhotels.nl 5,000 EUR
sweden.tv 4,999 USD

Other
ferien.org 14,875 EUR
war.net 10,099 USD
kobo.org 10,000 USD
eyelashes.org 5,500 EUR
jejavascript.net 5,000 EUR

Mike Mann plays along with PETA.

Sex.com investor Mike Mann is playing along with PETA’s request that it get the Sex.com domain name.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) grabbed some publicity earlier this month when it requested the domain name Sex.com be donated to it instead of auctioned for millions of dollars.

As it turns out, one of Sex.com’s investors — Mike Mann — is a long time vegetarian. He says he’ll accept PETA’s request, but under one condition: The IRS gives him a tax deduction for it:

Mann, a world expert on domain valuation, estimates the Sex.com domain name to be worth $50 million. As long as the IRS agrees to recognize the $50 million tax deductible donation, then Mann will donate his share of to PETA for their charitable works.

Other than getting the IRS to recognize a $50 million tax deduction, there’s one other problem: Mann doesn’t own the entire domain name or the company that owns Sex.com. As we found out yesterday, Mann has sunk more money into Sex.com than any of the other investors, but he is still just a part owner.

.Tel domain names get IDNs in June.

Coming soon: Jörn.tel, Júlia.tel, and Bjørn.tel.

.Tel registry Telnic is launching registration of .tel Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in 16 languages on June 15. IDNs will be available in Chinese, Danish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

The company plans to launch more IDNs as other languages are approved for IDNs when there is sufficient demand.

Telnic requested permission from ICANN to offer IDNs back in December, and the request was approved in January.

.Tel IDNs will be offered by many of the same domain name registrars that currently offer .tel. Registration costs are expected to be similar to existing .tel registrations. Although registrants can pick their language for the second level, the top level domain will remain the Latin-character “.tel”.

As of the end of 2009, .tel had approximately 275,000 domain names registered.