Court filing shows proposed $13 million domain name sale.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been checking the Escom bankruptcy court docket twice daily for an update to the Sex.com case. Earlier today the court posted a proposed order (pdf) for the sale of Sex.com for $13 million. The buyer is Clover Holdings Limited.

The sale was handled by Sedo, which worked to broker a sale of the domain name on behalf of Sex.com owner Escom, which had been pushed into bankruptcy. If Sedo was unable to find a buyer through negotiations it was going to hold an open auction. Apparently there was significant interest, and entering into an auction could have caused difficulties as the sale and payment terms would have been fixed.

The deal still needs to be approved by the court. If approved, this will be a fairly good resolution to what has been yet another rough patch for the storied Sex.com domain name.

(Update: congrats to Kevin Murphy over at DomainIncite, who appears to be the first person to report on this breaking sale today in an article at The Register.)

Online business formation company loses arbitration case.

Business Filings Incorporated, which offers business filing services at BizFilings.com, has lost a domain name dispute over BizFiling.com (singular version).

The company registered BizFilings.com back in 1996, but for many years used the brand “Business Filings Incorporated” on its web site. It filed an intent-to-use trademark in 2000 for BizFilings, which was refused a couple years later. Then in 2008 it filed a trademark again, citing a first-use-in-commerce date of 1996. The respondent registered the domain name in 2002.

As the respondent’s attorney John Berryhill pointed out, it’s impossible that the company was using BizFilings as a trademark back in 1996 when it first registered the domain name. He showed many examples of the company using its Business Filings Incorporated brand on its web site instead, and it filed an intent-to-use application in 2000 — suggesting that the company wasn’t using the BizFilings brand yet.

The three person World Intellectual Property Forum determined that the domain name wasn’t registered in bad faith.

A sales update from the top two domain name marketplaces.

I’m a bit behind since I’ve been a TRAFFIC Miami all week, but I do have some sales to report courtesy of Sedo and Afternic.

Sedo’s top sale was Cursos.com for $150,000. Cursos means “courses” in Spanish. The company also had some good ccTLD and other sales.

The top five .com sales for the week are:

cursos.com 150000 USD
liveup.com 11500 USD
prova.com 10000 USD
zelte.com 9900 EUR
treatacne.com 8000 USD

Top five ccTLD sales:

rep.ly 15000 GBP
skins.tv 13185 USD
rufnummer.de 9900 EUR
kbr.cn 9000 USD
shipping.eu 8988 EUR

Top five other sales:

onlinekredit.org 26000 EUR
moksha.org 8500 USD
matratze.net 5950 EUR
ihit.net 3500 USD
societes.net 2788 USD

Afternic also reported a selection of sales. I think it’s worth showing a random sample of these sales as examples of the type of brandable or mid-market domains the company is able to move through its distribution network. This will be more relevant to domainers as Afternic onboards Moniker and eNom to its platform, allowing domainers to more easily sell their domains through the company. Here are some examples at various price points:

radioplus.com $10,000.00
alcoholrecovery.com $8,000.00
wallstreetdaily.com $7,588.00
ecosim.com $5,788.00
BikerHelmets.com $5,000.00
couponzone.com $4,500.00
sight.org $4,388.00
mysmart.com $4,200.00
killbedbugs.com $4,000.00
wizwin.com $3,588.00
mytaxi.net $3,500.00
adpush.com $3,388.00
advertise-here.com $2,988.00
happygroup.com $2,750.00
StudyBug.com $2,100.00
carleasing.org $2,088.00
computerconsulting.org $1,650.00
dryers.net $1,000.00

Biggest TRAFFIC conference in years concludes in South Beach.

TRAFFIC Miami drew to a close this morning with a presentation and domain trading session organized by Epik. Here are my takeaways and random tidbits from the conference:

-Attendance came in below expectations. Although I was unable to get a full tally, attendance was somewhere south of 300. Still, this is one of the biggest TRAFFIC conferences in years, and credit is due to Rick and Howard for making that happen.

-Don King’s talk left a lot of people scratching their heads, and it made for many jokes yesterday evening.

-Afternic made a big splash at the conference with its two new distribution partners, and it brought a lot of people to the event. The company held a cocktail party last night on the hotel lawn.

-Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. (e.g. Google)

-As part of my new job with Directi, we relaunched the BigJumbo domain parking service at the event. It was interesting for me to be on the “other side of the booth”.

-A lot of faces that hadn’t come to a show in years made the trip to Miami. The domain world has changed since 2007, and it was good to see some of these people in attendance.

-Many people apparently confuse Ted Olson (Afternic) with me. It can be quite humorous.

-I sat in on the first 15 or so lots at the auction. The auctioneer did a good job moving along when domains didn’t sell.

Promoter Don King addresses TRAFFIC Conference in Miami.

Don King addressed the audience at the TRAFFIC conference in Miami. King said he came to promote what he’s calling the “People’s Internet”. It was difficult to understand exactly what it is, but he said it’s a way for people to broadcast instantly on the internet. He has two “First Amendment” trucks to capture video and man on the street interviews.

King acknowledged the audience has the the name – “domain name is the name, now you must have the content…you have to have something sound on the ground when you’re around.”

King is also promoting an event in Miami at American Airlines Arena on On December 17. It’s a festival/boxing match/something else.

To be completely honest, I couldn’t understand much of what King was trying to communicate. So anyone else in the audience that wants to chime in let me know.