NBC Universal and DONE! Fight Over What to Do With Women.com
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
Domain name losing value as lawsuit works its way through the courts.
DONE! Ventures lawsuit against NBC Universal and General Electric Company has been moved from state court to U.S. District Court, and there the parties are fighting over what to do with the domain names pending trial.
As background, DONE! sued NBC after a deal by the former to purchase Women.com and Women.net for $1 million fell through. DONE! is asking for NBC to follow through on the deal, which allegedly was overruled by NBC Universal’s CEO after the deal was agreed upon.
Now the question is what to do with Women.com and Women.net pending the outcome of the case. DONE! says that the links pointing to Women.com and the domain’s page rank are a big part of the value of the domains. After the suit was filed, NBC pointed the domains to a dead web page, which could have resulted in losing the search engine juice. The domains were then forwarded to NBC’s iVillage.com web site.
DONE! is asking the court for a temporary restraining order to transfer the domains to a third party, which can then put some content on the sites to hopefully save some of the search engine value.
Here are the relevant court documents:
DONE! Ventures application for temporary restraining order for Women.com and Women.net
GE response to DONE! Ventures motion for temporary restraining order
Further Reading:
- Sedo Sued for $10 Million for Failing to Enforce Women.com Transaction with NBC Universal
- DONE! Ventures Sues NBC Universal Over Failed Women.com Deal at Sedo
- Lawyers Fight Over Monte Cahn’s Laptop
Tags: done ventures, ge, lawsuits, nbc universal
This has the makings of a great story, dont see why nbc would remove the links, almost as if they know they are about to lose the site and then work to devalue the domain, that being said…I highly doubt that when done bought the domain name their contract spells out that any backlinks must be kept in tact….