Domain goes through UDRP for a second time.

Future Media Architects (FMA) has won another UDRP, this time for the generic four character domain name Veda.com. That FMA won is not a surprise, but the history of this domain name and some of the complainant’s accusations make this case more interesting.

Complainant VEDA GmbH actually won a UDRP for Veda.com back in 2003. But it failed to take ownership of the domain name after it won and FMA bought the domain name instead. VEDA GmbH claims that a former employee made a mistake on the transfer. Yet it waited a stunning seven years before deciding to try to rectify this.

Then, instead of contacting FMA about the matter, it simply filed a UDRP. After FMA called the complainant out on this, the complainant explained:

Complainant did not contact Respondent, because information on the Internet made it clear that Respondent is not a legitimate business entity but merely a commercial domain-grabber who would never have willingly transferred the domain name.

VEDA GmbH, an IT company, said that FMA was trying to take business from it by forwarding Veda.com to FMA.com, where FMA allegedly offers web development services. Of course FMA doesn’t actually offer web development services to anyone — FMA has plenty of money and wouldn’t bother developing web sites for other people. The “Web Development” tab on its web site merely shows domain names it has developed.

The complainant then took a jab at FMA’s developed web sites, calling them Potemkin villages.

Ultimately the panel found the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith.

Hobbies.com sale provides a nice return to the seller.

Afternic brokered the sale of Hobbies.com this past week for $297,500, giving the seller a nice profit.

The domain name has an interesting history. It was purchased along with iToys.com in the eToys bankruptcy auction back in February 2009 for $102,000. So even if iToys.com is worthless (which it’s not), the seller tripled his money in less than two years.

This makes sense, as the auction for this domain name (and others in the auction including Toys.com) was kept fairly quiet. Buyers also had to pay a deposit and submit a custom purchase agreement contract to participate. Proof in point: Toys.com sold at the auction for $1.25 million. People who weren’t aware of the auction petitioned the court and the domain name was re-auctioned for a whopping $5.1 million.

The buyer is Triton Web Properties, which owns gems such as Boating.com, Biking.com, and Yachting.com

Big domain purchase made sense for buyer.

It’s always interesting to get inside someone’s mind after they make a major domain name purchase. Earlier today HomeInsurance.com CEO Carlos Lagomarsino was kind enough to give me some insight into his $570,000 purchase of HomeownersInsurance.com, which was announced today.

Lagomarsino is obviously an expert in the home insurance arena with his HomeInsurance.com site. He purchased HomeInsurance.com back in 2007 for about $1 million. His experience made this purchase easier, although he still went above his budget of $500,000.

He used GoDaddy to help close the deal.

“I reached out to the owner via my contact Brad Larson at Godaddy.com,” said Lagomarsino. “Brad did a wonderful job of negotiating this sale for us and I am impressed with his and Godaddy’s professionalism.”

Lagomarsino believes HomeownersInsurance.com isn’t worth as much as HomeInsurance.com because there are considerably more searches for the latter. Still it should pay dividends.

“We are very excited about this purchase because we will end up putting it through the same process that took HomeInsurance.com to the number one spot on a Home Insurance search,” he explained. “We’ve learned quite a bit in developing HomeInsurance.com and we should be able to apply our learning very quickly and monetize this new site in record time.”

His company is still looking to buy domains, but only premium ones.

Congrats to both the buyer and seller.

Company loses challenge over derogatory domain names.

Morgan Stanley has lost a challenge at National Arbitration Forum for the domain names screwedbymorganstanleysmithbarney.com and screwedbymorganstanley.com.

On the surface this seems like a classic case of a gripe site. In general, you are allowed to use domain names that include trademarks if the person going to the URL will clearly know the domain name isn’t owned by the trademark holder based on the URL alone (and not the content of the page). That the domains have a “screwed by” prefix would qualify.

Yet there are a couple things interesting about this case. First, the domain owner planned to forward the domain names to its ScrewedByForums.com site yet hadn’t done that yet. As a result the domain names were showing registrar parked pages with ad links.

Second is the content the registrant planned to forward the domains to. If you visit screwedbyforums.com/morgan-stanley-smith-barney you’ll see that the page contains Google Adsense ads. A lot of panels have found that creating a gripe site that is monetized negates the free speech protection of gripe sites.

Ironically Morgan Stanley may have been better off waiting until the domains were forwarded to ScrewedByForums.com before filing its complaint. Then it could have argued that the respondent was using the domains for commercial benefit.

Instead, Morgan Stanley lost the case.

TLDH raises cash stockpile ahead of new top level domain name releases.

Top Level Domain Holdings, which owns Minds + Machines, has conditionally raised about $7.5 million through the sale of stock.

According to a release this morning:

The Company intends to use the Placing proceeds to provide additional working capital and in particular, to develop the business ahead of the expected formal commencement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) of the application process for the introduction of new generic top level domains (“gTLDs”).

This money is on top of about $5.5 million cash the company currently holds.

CEO Antony Van Couvering said:

The Board of TLDH is delighted with the support and enthusiasm we have received from our shareholders for this funding round and we are confident that our company is very well positioned to both facilitate and benefit from the exciting opportunity to develop new generic top level domains.

Indeed, it appears the applications for new top level domains will finally open next year barring any preemptive legal challenges that create injunctions.