Municipality wants .athens, but may run into challenges with trademark application.

Add Athens to the list of municipalities that want to register their own top level domain names.

I haven’t seen anything on the web about the city’s plans, but it filed two trademark applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “.Athens” and “dot .athens” back in February. I hadn’t seen these yet because the original applications didn’t list domain names as part of the goods and services for the marks.

When originally filed, the trademarks alluded generally to “telecommunications”, “education”, and “scientific and technological services”.

The trademark examiners suggested changes to the classes and the marks were amended last week.

In a letter to the trademark office, an attorney for Athens wrote:

Please note that these two trademarks are very important for the Municipality of Athens, Greece as they will be used for a new Internet Registry in the future. We both understand that it is natural the Municipality of Athens to have rights in the name of Athens, but I have to protect the new Registry from bad faith behaviors. The trademarks have been fully accepted in a National and E.U. Community Level and I didn’t have problems with WIPO. I understand that your Trademark Law is different and we have to send you more details.

I was surprised the initial action from the USPTO didn’t address that top level domain names can’t be trademarked in the U.S., but perhaps that’s because the original goods and services classes didn’t say that the marks would be used as a TLD.

Companies belatedly pursue .co domain names.

World Intellectual Property Organization has handed down its first two UDRP decisions for .co domain names since .co was relaunched over the summer.

In two separate decisions, WIPO panelists found in favor of the complainants for lafitness.co and tilda.co.

Twenty-one .co UDRP cases have been filed since August. In some cases the domain owner handed the domain name over voluntarily. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. filed a complaint for booz.co that was terminated after the domain name was transferred to the consulting firm.

Recently filed cases include CLS Rémy Cointreau going after Cointreau.co, Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited filing for imperialtobacco.co, and travel site Get Away Today.Com Inc. asking for getawaytoday.co. In each case the complainant owns the .com equivalent of the .co domain.

Amazon granted patent for domain name marketplace.

Amazon.com subsidiary Amazon Technologies, Inc. was today granted U.S. patent number 7,805,379 for “Method and system for leasing or purchasing domain names”.

This patent, which was applied for in December 2007, seems to conflict with a number of existing domain name marketplace and domain monetization technologies that were commercially available at the time the patent application was filed.

One conflict in particular is Sendori, which offers a bidded marketplace to “lease” traffic that goes to a particular domain name. The leasing system described in Amazon’s patent would allow someone to go to a marketplace and lease a fraction or all of the traffic to a domain name. The marketplace would then split the traffic accordingly through a redirect. However, Amazon’s method may lease a percentage of traffic for a set period of time rather than on a per-visitor basis.

The marketplace could also offer domain names for sale and may also include some sort of valuation technology. You can read the full patent here (pdf). Abstract:

A method and system are described that enables a domain name owner (i.e., a “lessor”) to grant a third party (i.e., a “lessee”) a lease to any domain name the lessor owns. More specifically, a lessor may use a domain name service to allow a third party (i.e., a “lessee”) to lease a domain name for use or to purchase the domain name outright. More specifically, the lessor may lease a domain name to the lessee so that any user who accesses the leased domain name is redirected to a network resource identified by the lessee. The lessee may also be provided the option to purchase the domain name outright from the lessor, rather than lease it.

New York City event will educate about Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

Few topics have received greater attention this year than IDNs. So it’s fitting that the first ever “IDN Event and Auction” will take place October 30, 2010 at the Haru Restaurant in New York City at 7 pm. The event is organized by IDNTools and will be sponsored by Register.com, Moniker and SnapNames.

The goal of the event is to educate domain registrants about IDNs, their value proposition, how to register them, the value of developing IDNs, the importance of connecting with local audiences, and we will also hold an IDN auction.

Although the agenda is not yet set, speakers include DotAsia CEO Edmon Chung, Elliot Silver, and Associated Cities Executive Director Patrick Carleton.

Early bird registration through October 1 is $99. After October 1 registration prices increase to $275.

by Jan Barta

[Jan Barta is Chairman of Elephant Orchestra, a fast-growing media company focused on direct navigation and lead generation based in Prague. One the company's domain products is Elephant Traffic, a direct navigation monetization solution.]

Andrew asked me if I could write a short guide to Prague with some tips what you can do here during DOMAINFest or if you decide to prolong your stay afterwards. Since Prague is my hometown, I obviously had to accept the guest post!

Arrival and Hotels
Once you arrive at Prague’s airport, Ruzyne, make sure you take the yellow AAA cabs, they seem to be the most honest and don’t rip off tourists as non-branded taxis do. The taxi ride to the center should cost 500-600 Kc, which is the local currency ($1=19 Kc). If you wish to take the public transport, there are buses from the Airport which will take you to the Dejvicka metro station. If you are staying at the Intercontinental, get off at the Staromestska metro stop, from where the hotel is a short walk. If you are arriving by train, you will most likely end up at the Main Train Station. Taxi from there to the Intercontinental should cost 150 Kc roughly.

At the time of writing, the Intercontinental is fully booked. So if you are looking for alternative hotels, these are my recommendations. For top of the market I recommend the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental, the Kempinski and Radisson Alcron are nice too. For mid-range the Marriott, Hilton or Sheraton. A very nice hotel is also Hotel Josef or Budha Bar, which are sort of designer hotels. For the budget segment, there are tonnes of opportunities as well, just use Hotels.com (direct navigation!).

Sight-seeing
Prague is definitely the top city for sight-seeing in Europe along with Paris and Vienna, so there is lots to see due to our very rich history. I’ll only cover the utmost basics, more can be found in any tour guide. If you have 2-3 hours to spare and want to see the most, I recommend this walk: Start at the Municipal House (Obecni Dum), walk down Celetna Street towards the Old Town Square. Then carry on across the Charles Bridge and up the hill towards the Prague Castle. Other notable things to see: Vysehrad castle (the second Castle in Prague), the Old Jewish Quarter, National Theatre, National Museum, Rudolfinum Concert Hall etc. If you are bringing your kids, you might fancy a trip to the Prague zoo as well, which is very nice.

Restaurants
The Intercontinental itself has a pretty good restaurant on the top floor. Other restaurants I would recommend: The Allegro restaurant in the Four Seasons (Michelin star), Pravda, Barock, La Finestra, Aromi, La Vita e Bella, Samurai (Sushi), Cantina (Mexican) or the Taj Mahal (Indian). You might as well try Czech cuisine once you are here, try the restaurant Kolkovna.

Clubs
If you are looking for a more upmarket experience that draws a stylish crowd, your choice is Sasazu or Mecca, which generally get going around midnight. If you are looking for more alternative dance music, Roxy has great music, Radost FX is cool as well. If you are looking for something more mainstream, try Karlovy Lazne, which is a club with 4 floors with different music on each. If you like jazz, I recommend JazzDock or Agharta Jazz Club. If you’re looking for a gentleman’s club, Darling Cabaret is the largest (usually around 100-200 girls there).

Bars and Pubs
The Czech Republic is the beer nation of Europe (no other country in the world drinks as much of it per capita as we do) so you might as well check out some of the Czech Typical Pubs. The 3 most notorious are probably U Fleku, U Tygra or U Medvidku. If you’re looking at the top bars, I recommend the following – Tretter’s and Buggsy’s (both are sort of New York style bars), Bodeguita del Medio (Cuban, very lively), KU Bar and Silwer (they draw a more model/metrosexual crowd) or Bombay or Harley’s (both are usually pretty lively).

Open house
If you will still be in Prague on Friday I would cordially like to invite you to our Open house – a tour of the Elephant Orchestra/Elephant Traffic offices, which are located at Mezibranska 4 (right next to the National Museum) between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. We will be serving drinks and light snacks as well. If you are interested in coming please email Mateusz Drela (drela -at- elephant-orchestra.com).