New Company Wants to Help Unmask Private Whois Records
Monday, June 28th, 2010
A possible new entrant into the trademarked domain recovery industry.
NameDepot.com, Inc. has filed a trademark application for “RealRegistrant”, with services described as:
Application service provider, namely service, software, database, web interface, and technical support for users to obtain information about the owner or registrant of a domain name when the WHOIS information is obscured by a domain name WHOIS Privacy or Proxy service; domain name information and research databases via the Internet for consultation, legal counseling, trademark and domain screening and clearance, competitive and legal research and watch purposes; application service provider, namely providing software as a service which facilitates users to obtain information about the owner or registrant of a domain name when the WHOIS information is obscured by a domain name WHOIS Privacy or Proxy service and in protecting their brands, domains and trademarks
In other words, the company will help people figure out who is behind a proxy domain name. This can be done by filing complaints with the proxy or privacy service.
The NameDepot.com web site says it’s coming soon but doesn’t have any more information, other than a link to TMSecure.com. The page title for TMSecure.com is “Detect and Recover Trademark-Infringing Domain Names”. NameDepot.com was purchased from BuyDomains last year, and TMSecure.com was registered in December 2009.
I contacted the registrant of NameDepot.com via phone today and he wasn’t willing to share any information at this time. However, it looks like another competitor in the trademark domain tracking and recovery field.
Related posts:
- Providing Whois Privacy Isn’t Free
- Wikileaks Could Put More Pressure on Whois Privacy Services
- 15%-25% of Domain Names are Registered with Masked Whois
Tags: Cybersquatting, domain trademark
There is no way to unmask a private WHOIS that was enabled upon domain registration. The only way is via the legal process e.g. a lawsuit.
Let them try, no real business here that I see, again smart people stupid business plan. I can unmask a domain owner with history, 4111 and a few search tools such as backround checks, business filings etc. I dont see anyone stupid enough to ay for this and if they did want to know like Acr said theyd just file the old fashion way.
@ Josh – but the typical trademark attorney has no idea how to do that.
@ Acro – you can do it with an easier legal mechanism — often times a simple C&D will do. A UDRP will do it, too. And they can also try to triangulate hosting records and IP addresses.
As long as you keep your domains away from GoDaddy, to unmask WHOIS records requires more than a C&D. There has to be a serious reason in order to challenge the right to not display WHOIS records, such as trademark violation (hence, a UDRP would be used) or copyright infringement; for the average parked domain with PPC nameservers the task is difficult.
I know some services will also track affiliate URLs in domains to find similar owners.
Isn’t it ironic that the owner of NameDepot uses private whois.
If I were to guess, Edwin lives in Palo Alto and he bought the domain from BuyDomains in March, 2009.
I guess I could go one step further and determine how much he paid.
Nah !!!
I don’t feel right in divulging information when someone wants to be in stealth.
“Isn’t it ironic that the owner of NameDepot uses private whois.”
LOL, I was thinking that myself
“Isn’t it ironic that the owner of NameDepot uses private whois.”
we can ask them to help in unmask their priacy protection first
Here are the owners… One of them is an old Domainer.
http://www.linkedin.com/commonSearch?type=people&keywords=namedepot&pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&pageKey=nmp-home&search=Search
It’ll be a great help for someones!!
http://dninvestigation.com does the same service. Nothing new or innovative going on here.