IOC to ICANN: just a friendly reminder that we’re important.

The International Olympic Committee has sent another letter to ICANN requesting that it be given “holier-than-thou” trademark rights and special protections for the launch of new top level domain names.

As you may recall, in April 2009 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sent a letter to ICANN stating that its trademarks receive special international protection, and that it was worried it would have to extend effort to protect its marks as new top level domains are rolled out. It threatened to “take action against ICANN for damages resulting to the IOC or the Olympic Movement from the implementation of the gTLD proposal.”

The IOC has followed up with multiple letters during comment periods. It just sent another letter (pdf) to ICANN, requesting a meeting to discuss special protection:

“Due to the unique nature of the Olympic trademarks which are protected around the world in many different ways, measures should be taken by ICANN to have them protected accordingly in the scheme of ICANN’s projects.”

Um, sure. Get in line, guys. Just about every Fortune 500 has trademarks “protected around the world in many different ways”. ICANN should politely decline this meeting and invite IOC to attend the next ICANN meeting in Brussels.

IOC is also apparently concerned about .sport, asking ICANN to discuss the “status of the development of the new extension .sport”.

That’s an easy request: there is no status. Applications aren’t open yet and ICANN has nothing to do with .sport and potential applicants for this TLD.

But to be fair, one of the potential applicants for .sport wants ICANN to step in to prevent competitors such as .basketball.

Second annual “Domain Madness” auction runs through Tuesday.

Domain Consultant’s Domain Madness 2 auction ends Tuesday afternoon. Live online bidding is available at DomainMadness2.com. Domain Consultant is giving away a free iPad to one lucky person who registers for the auction (no bidding is necessary).

The quality of domains in the auction this year is substantially better than last year’s, with some uber-premium domain names to choose from. But you’ll need to bring your pocket book:

Strawberries.com $100,000
Races.com $90,000
Mad.com $250,000
Idol.com $150,000
HappyBirthday.com $1,450,000
Balloon.com $250,000

A number of the no reserve, low priced domains have already received bids.

To the select few who made the trip to Las Vegas for Domain Madness, have a great time. I went last year and had a blast.

Will a continent TLD work, and the mystery of Adrenaline TLD.

The number of firms coming out from the woodwork with plans to launch new TLDs is increasing. Some of these groups have been out in the open for a while but are just now revving up the PR machine.

First, let’s take a look at .Africa. It certainly got some more visibility during ICANN’s meeting in Kenya. But haven’t we been here before? .Asia has been frequently dismissed as not making any sense. It’s like .northamerica — it’s such a diverse area that it doesn’t make sense to have a continent-wide tld. Perhaps Africa is different given its geographic nature, but I still think this one is a long shot.

Another company, Adrenaline TLD, plans to launch five new TLDs including .skate, .board, .ski, .bike, and .surf. I had come across Adrenaline’s web site before, but checked it out again this weekend after all of the company’s TLDs started following me on Twitter.

Curious as to who is behind this venture, I checked out the “about us” page on its web site, only to find the nebulous “Adrenaline TLD Inc. is made up of long time domain name, internet and business professionals who are first and foremost action sports enthusiasts dedicated to fostering diversity and new opportunities across the internet.”

I e-mailed the company via its contact form to find out who’s behind it, but haven’t received a response yet.

A visit to whois won’t help you figure it out, either. It contains bogus information:

Adrenaline TLD
West End Avenue
New York, New York 10023
United States
+1.123456789

Tobacco company scores a hit with marijuana domains.

In December I wrote about how Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, had filed a complaint to get the domain names AltriaCannabis.com and AltriaMarijuana.com. The company won the case at World Intellectual Property Forum against Daniel Cheng of Washington, D.C., and the domain names should be transferred to Altria’s possession shortly.

As I noted in the earlier article, the domain names each had web sites speaking out against the legalization of marijuana. But it turns out those sites weren’t posted until after Altria initially contacted the owner asking him to refrain from using the Altria marks. That might explain the hasty nature of the web sites, which each had links to both pro and anti marijuana legalization sites.

Now for the big question: what will Altria do with these domain names now that it owns them?

Suit claims registrar parked trademarked domain names for the period between expiration and deletion.

Verizon has a filed a lawsuit (pdf) against domain name registrar DirectNIC and related companies, alleging that the defendants parked expired domain names infringing on Verizon’s trademarks in the period between expiration and deletion.

The lawsuit also names directors of DirectNIC and related companies as defendants, and uses a gripe site and UDRP decisions as part of the basis for linking together the company with a number of other entities, which the suit calls “shell companies”.

Verizon claims that the defendants have registered 288 domain names that infringe on its marks. But the crux of its argument is that DirectNIC became, in effect, the registrant of these domain names for the period between when the domain names expired and were deleted. The Verizon lawsuit also claims that the defendants then transferred some of these expired domains to other entities for a fee prior to deletion.

Most major registrars replace the whois information for expired domain names with their own information or domain privacy, and often times display some sort of message about the domain being expired. During this period, the registrar places a parked page on the domain name. The domains are later auctioned off or transferred to other entities.

For example, Network Solutions places a notice and parked page on expired domain names. It then sends the domain name to an auction on NameJet. If there’s a buyer, the domain is then transferred to the new owner. Some domain registrars also have deals with buyers to sell domains to them outside of the auction process.

It’s not clear why Verizon sued DirectNIC and related other companies rather than a competitor. Verizon makes a lot of allegations in the lawsuit linking the defendants together, even though the point of the lawsuit doesn’t seem to address these linked entities and instead goes after the practice of parking expired domain names.

Depending on the outcome, this suit could have ramifications for most major domain name registrars and their expired domain parking practices, let alone “coming soon” placeholder pages.