FB trademark still an open issue between parties.

Facebook bought the domain name FB.com from American Farm Bureau. But unlike what Mark Zuckerberg told the audience Monday when launching the social network’s new messaging system, the two parties haven’t settled an ongoing trademark dispute.

During Monday’s launch Zuckerberg said:

“The farm bureau has agreed to give us FB.com and we in return have agreed to not sell Farm subsidies.”

Not according to records at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. On Tuesday — the day after Zuckerberg’s comments — American Farm Bureau filed a motion with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to suspend the group’s challenge to Facebook applying for the FB trademark because they’re still trying to settle.

Opposer and Applicant, through Opposer’s undersigned counsel, hereby move this Honorable Board to further suspend the above-identified proceeding until January 17, 2011. The parties are actively engaged in negotiations for the settlement of this matter.

Facebook’s counsel apparently consented to this suspension on Monday.

And Zuckerberg’s word “give” is probably a misstatement. American Farm Bureau sold the domain name to Facebook; it wasn’t an early Christmas gift.

Interesting changes to Dashboard.com domain name.

It looks like Nokia may have just sold the domain name Dashboard.com, but some of the changes to the domain name don’t quite add up.

Nokia got the domain name when it acquired Intellisync Corporation in 2005. It then forwarded the domain name to a landing page saying that Intellisync was now part of Nokia.

On November 17 the whois record for Dashboard.com changed to DNStination Inc. DNStination is part of Mark Monitor, and is typically used by large companies when they stealth acquire domain names. For example, Facebook recently used them to acquire FB.com.

Perhaps Nokia just started using Mark Monitor and transferred it to their whois? Maybe, but here’s the strange part: the nameservers for DashBoard.com just changed to parking company SmartName. And it’s now a parked page.

I’ve never heard of a domain investor using Mark Monitor to acquire a domain. But why would it suddenly be parked? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Sex.com officially becomes the largest all cash publicly announced domain sale of all time.

The check has cleared.

A few weeks after signing documents for a $13 million all cash deal, Escom LLC has officially sold Sex.com with the help of Sedo. Congratulations to Sedo broker Jeff Gabriel who handled the deal. Also congrats to Sedo for its persistence trying to get the name to broker. It filed an affidavit with the court arguing it should be allowed to broker the domain name and said it felt it could sell the domain name for in excess of $6 million.

In the end the company sold the domain name for much more than I thought it would sell for. It’s also about $1.5 million more than the cash component of the last deal for the name. This comes despite a drop in the online adult entertainment market over the past several years.

A couple million of the sales price is being held back by the court pending settlement of outstanding claims between some of the investors.

Company registers domain names related to calling Santa.

Google has done some fun stuff with Santa over the years. With NORAD you could track Santa on Google Earth, for example.

But the company may have something else in its sleigh this year. The company just registered a number of domain names related to Santa, including GoogleSanta.com (and the .net and .org versions). What could the company be up to?

A few other domain names the company just registered may give a better clue: SendaCallFromSanta.com, SendSantaaCall.com, and a number of other variations.

Perhaps your kid will be able to call Santa and tell him what he/she wants this holiday season. This call could then be forwarded to the parent. And of course, it would be interesting to see if Google used this for its voice recognition testing…or data on what people are looking for for Christmas. Or maybe you can program a call that will be sent to your kid’s phone. There’s already an Android app for that.

Product takes advantage of how domain names are easier to remember than phone numbers.

I got a pitch for an interesting product today called Siter.com. The idea is that instead of needing to know a phone number to call someone or business you just need to know their domain name.

For example, let’s say you need to call your bank to ask a question. Normally on your smartphone you’d need to go to the banks web page and search for their phone number. With Siter.com you just type in “mybank.com” and it automatically calls your bank.

Between the domain name and the phone call is of course a database of phone numbers corresponding to each web address.

Siter has apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

I like the idea, although it won’t work in all situations. For example, it will be difficult to contact a particular branch or location of a chain. If I want to reach my local BestBuy.com store to see if they have iPads in stock and type in “BestBuy.com” then it’s going to call a chain-wide number.

Still, the point is clear: remembering a domain name is much easier than remembering a phone number. Siter is capitalizing on that.