Domain name headed to auction block soon.

Bankrupt entertainment company Movie Gallery has submitted its plan to the court to auction off intellectual property assets including Reel.com. Movie Gallery operated the Hollywood Video rental chain as well as Game Crazy.

The intellectual property sale will be handled by StreamBank, LLC. According to StreamBank, LLC, the reel.com domain name:

This domain and trademark originally served as a movie review site, online store, and is the name under which Movie Gallery operated a successful store in Berkeley, CA. Reel.com was purchase by Hollywood Video for approximately $100 million and an equivalent amount was then invested in marketing the site. Would make a great competitor to Rotten Tomatoes, Flixter, or a file sharing site.

So a $100 million acquisition (probably overpriced) and then $100 million in marketing for the site. Reel.com still gets over 10,000 unique visitors each month according to Compete.com.

I’ll update you when the court approves the sale procedures.

Some of the dumbest logic you’ll ever read in a UDRP.

A recent UDRP complaint brought by FTR of Bondues, France is so misguided that I have to use a juvenile messaging acronym to describe it. Yes, when you read FTR’s logic, you’ll be ROFLMAO.

FTR is a holding company that owns a number of subsidiaries, and also a trademark for LMC. It appears to be in the business of selling kitchen cabinets, light fixtures, and window coverings.

The respondent is Synopsys, a nearly $4 billion market cap technology company. Synopsys acquired the domain when it bought Logic Modeling Corporation in 1994. It now forwards LMC.com to Snyopsys.

So what was FTR’s logic that it should be awarded the domain? The panelist summarized it:

The Respondent does not own any rights in the LMC mark. Since the merging of the company, the Logic Modeling Corporation and the Respondent, the disputed domain name has not been used by the Respondent; instead the disputed domain name resolves to the website “www.synopsys.com”. The Respondent does not use the LMC mark, and does not hold a trademark for this term. Therefore the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name.

The disputed domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith, as the Respondent is prepared to sell it for USD125,000. This shows that the Respondent’s intent was to parasitize the activities of the Complainant and to take advantage of the sale of the domain name. The Respondent has not made commercial use of the disputed domain name in good faith. The Respondent has continued to renew the disputed domain name, however has never used it.

Due to the fact that both parties have been in communication earlier this year, the Respondent is unable ignore the existence of the trademarks. The Respondent has attempted to block an attempt by the Complainant to develop internationally, by preventing it from using the generic level domain “.com”. Together all of these elements show the bad faith of the Respondent’s actions.

Ah yes, Synopys’ grand plans have come to fruition. In 1994 it acquired Logic Modeling Corporation with a sole purpose: in the year 2010, it would be able to “parasitize” FTR’s business of selling kitchen cabinets and to prevent it from going international.

Amazingly, the panel did not find FTR guilty of reverse domain name hijacking on the basis that FTR did have a trademark for LMC.

There’s a personal portfolio auction going on right now with some great values.

Here’s something I wasn’t aware of: Sedo will run a portfolio auction for you through it’s auction system. That is if you have good domains at a good reserve.

For an example, take a look at the Richard Whitney Portfolio Auction going on right now. Look quickly, because it ends at 12:30 EDT today.

Whitney’s auction has a number of good deals that are (currently) priced very nicely. And 29 of the 30 domains have already met their reserve. There are a lot of good product names on the list.

Many of the domains would be better as plurals, but are still good domains for development. For example: baseballscore.com, hockeyticket.com, basketballscore.com, athleticshoe.com. All of these domains are currently $510 or less.

Some other domains in the auction that are currently at very attractive prices:

Scratchoffs.com $220
AutoInspections.com $399
Doodling.com $499
CategoryKiller.com $411
GuitarClinic.com $80

This isn’t a very smart thing to do.

If you’re going to register a domain name including a famous trademark, you probably shouldn’t brag about it. Like this guy did [update: removed link. Guy took post down. He also has a new post up that says "I recently decided it was time to migrate my personal blog away from this business as my view points at times can be a bit controversial."] after registering Starbucks.im.

I recently picked up a few good .im top level domain names including starbucks.im. Though this particular domain extension represents the county code top level domain of the Isle of Man in Western Europe, this domain name is quickly getting picked up by companies wanting to offer instant message services as well as a great domain to describe who you are.

It’s pretty easy to prove bad faith when you register a domain if you tell the world.

.IM has its own ccTLD dispute policy outside of UDRP. So if Starbucks wants this domain it can probably just follow that process. Or heck, it can sue the guy in the U.S. where he’s based.

But my guess is a nice cease & desist letter and a cup of hot coffee would do the trick.

(Hat tip Nick Braak)

CIRA transitions registry system and hits a milestone.

Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has had a big week.

First, it transitioned its entire registry system to EPP. That’s welcome news for registrars carrying .ca, and it alleviates a lot of burdens on CIRA:

With the new system and policies, CIRA is effectively able to remove itself from many day-to-day transactions. Most transactions will be handled solely by CIRA certified Registrars. To ensure Registrants, the people and organizations who hold .CA domain names, continue to receive a high level of customer service, CIRA has introduced a mandatory technical and policy accreditation process for Registrars.

Second, the country code top level domain crossed the 1.5 million registrations mark. That’s about as many domains as are registered in .us. Canadian’s have embraced the .ca country code much more so than Americans have embraced .us. .Us has struggled thanks to the early adoption of .com in the country.