Both sides in case have something to be happy (and upset) about after judge issues rulings on motions.

A federal district judge has denied motions by both the plaintiff and the defendant in a lawsuit over the failed sale of Women.com.

Done! Ventures says it made a $1 million offer for Women.com and Women.net via Sedo that was accepted by NBC Universal. After NBC Universal allegedly backed out of the deal, Done! Ventures filed a lawsuit to force the company to complete the transaction.

On Friday the Honorable S. James Otero declined motions that were filed by both parties (pdf).

The judge declined Done! Ventures’ application for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction over what NBC can do with the women.com domain name as the lawsuit plays out. But the judge also declined NBC Universal’s motion to dismiss the case and, alternatively, to move the lawsuit to New York.

Otero noted that neither side had proved its case enough at this point to find in favor of their motions. It’s not proven at this point whether or not a contract was actually agreed to, so the judge declined to restrict NBCU’s use of women.com. Yet at the same time NBCU hasn’t proven that a contract was not made, so the judge declined to dismiss the lawsuit. Furthermore, the judge determined that moving the lawsuit from Done!’s home state of California to New York would unfairly burden Done! Ventures with little or no benefit for related parties.

Hurry if you want to “dine with an expert” at DOMAINfest.

DOMAINfest is trying something new at its conference the first week of February: Dine With An Expert.

Attendees can reserve a spot at the breakfast or lunch table with a handful of the event’s speakers.

So who are the hottest tickets?

Frank Schilling and SEO expert Bruce Clay. All 9 of their seats have already been reserved.

You also need to hurry if you’d like to sit with Sedo’s Kathy Nielson or Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky. Both have only one seat remaining.

There are a number of speakers at DOMAINfest that don’t make the usual rounds at domain name conferences, so it’s worth taking a look. Some of these speakers get paid a lot of money for an hour of their time. You can get it for free.

More delays likely to handle GAC issues.

ICANN has released details about its upcoming meeting with the Governmental Advisory Committee regarding new top level domain names. Although the meeting will take place ahead of the ICANN meeting in San Francisco this March, the February 28-March 1 get together does not appear to be the final meeting between the two on the matter.

As Kevin Murphy points out, ICANN’s release about the meeting states “This meeting is not intended to address the requirements/steps outlined in the Bylaws mandated Board-GAC consultation process.”

Why does this matter? It means the process will have to be invoked subsequently and another discussion held. ICANN would have to work much faster than usual to get this wrapped up by the San Francisco meeting.

It looked like applications would open up in August this year, but this may put that in jeopardy.

Highlights from my recent trip to Mumbai.

I spent last week in Mumbai at the Directi headquarters. It was great to sit down and work beside many of the people that I’ve only met over email and video conferences to date.

Experiencing Mumbai

I spent much of the time in the office and it was a fairly short trip. But I did get part of the “Mumbai experience”.

The first experience you have upon arriving in Mumbai is what locals call “driving”. I call it one big game of chicken. Seriously, driving in Mumbai makes New York City driving look like child’s play. The road is shared by cars, buses, trucks, autorickshaws, bicycles, people, handcarts, and occasional livestock. All with no lanes. And seemingly no rules. Red lights are merely a suggestion.

Yet through all the chaos traffic somehow works. I didn’t see a single accident while I was there.

The second experience is just living in such a mass of people. 20 million people are packed into the city. I rode past one of the main train stations at peak hour and thought our car was going to be lifted off the road by people. The trains are a site to see, too. There are no doors and people just hang out the side as it moves. I was dared to try to catch a ride on one. I declined.

The third experience is navigating the tourist shops. I walked into shops fully expecting to have to negotiate. But I wasn’t prepared for the intense cross selling. Seriously, these shop owners put the Go Daddy checkout process to shame. “You really should buy a rug to go with that Sari.” “Your wife would like this decorative elephant.”

Finally, I experienced real Indian food. Not Americanized Indian food. It puts local fare back home to shame.

Mumbai is unlike any city I’ve ever visited. A lot of it was good, like this view from my hotel on Juhu beach:

Oh yeah, and I think I’ve figured out the basic rules of cricket.

Inside the Directiplex

The Directiplex is a 1,500 seat building in the Andheri East area of Mumbai. It’s an impressive testament to Directi’s growth. The building houses all of the company’s businesses including ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, Skenzo, BigJumbo, and Media.net. (I primarily work with the latter three.)

It also houses the company’s new domain registrar BigRock. While I was in Mumbai, Directi co-founder Bhavin Turakhia showed off BigRock’s TV commercials to hundreds of employees. If you’re not from India you might not understand them, but judging from the crowd’s reaction they’ll make plenty of people laugh (and hopefully register domains).

Later this year the company will open up another building across town that can seat up to 800 people. Directi co-founder Divyank Turakhia gave me a sneak peak of the building, which has beautiful views across preserve land. When complete the building will include a bowling alley.

It’s all part of the company’s quest to attract good talent. The company has been successful so far, but there are still plenty of positions to fill.

Wikileaks.com expires but fate of domain name unknown

Elliot Silver has written a series of articles about Wikileaks.COM, a domain name that was registered at Go Daddy.

Here’s something else that’s interesting: wikileaks.com is expired.

I noticed this after reading a TechDirt article today about how the domain name is owned by the group behind Wikipedia. Wikia registered the domain name defensively after Wikileaks said it would be a “Wikipedia of secrets”.

Since then the company has offered to transfer the domain names to Wikileaks but the latter hasn’t accepted the transfer, according to an article on BBC.

The domain name expired on January 3. Will Go Daddy just let it go through the entire delete cycle? Or will it go to Go Daddy Auctions?