Last minute auction has a bunch of good domains with no reserve.

[Update: Rick Latona has just blogged, saying he's throwing in the towel on Latonas.com auction platform.] Sedo has just started a seven day auction of domain names owned by Rick Latona. All domains are listed at no reserve.

Some of the great domains in this auction include:

ISU.com
KansasCity.net
DayTraders.net
Destin.net
iNotebook.com
HeavyweightBoxer.com
iStockBrokers.com

ISU.com is already up to $650 and should sell for five figures. Some other domains already receiving bids are FastWireless.com, FunnyImages.com, Nuremberg.net, MasticBeach.com, DeepSeaFishing.co.uk, and rra.co.uk.

It’s not clear why these domains are being sold at a “firesale”, if you will. I hadn’t heard anything about this auction until it went live today.

In 2008 Latona asked $20,000 for KansasCity.net in his email newsletter.

Domain investor and developer scores penalty against company that attempted reverse domain name hijacking.

A judge has awarded Scott Day’s DigiMedia.com LP $103,717.66 stemming from a finding of reverse domain name hijacking against GoForIt Entertainment (pdf).

GoForIt made an interesting claim against DigiMedia back in 2006. It filed a cyberpiracy lawsuit over a number of domain names, ranging from WebDesign.com to Recipes.com to Org.com.

GoForIt’s argument? If you navigated to its supposed trademark “goforit” as a third level domain name, e.g. goforit.webdesign.com, it resolved to a parked directory page that took advantage of its GoForIt mark.

Essentially the third level was wildcarded, so anything you typed before the second level domain would pull up a parked page.

GoForIt also sent a letter to DigiMedia’s domain registrar, Tucows, which resulted in DigiMedia’s domain names being locked. This made it difficult for DigiMedia to go forward with a number of domain sales and partnerships that were being negotiated.

DigiMedia counter sued GoForIt entertainment for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and tortious interference with a contract. DigiMedia won a default judgment, and the judge spelled out the damages last week.

Company files to protect .Now.

A Denmark company has filed two trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark office for a .now top level domain name.

A company called Global Top Level Aps filed applications for .Now and DOTNOW on March 24. It also filed for European Community protection last December.

Global Top Level Aps is not the first applicant for a .now service mark, although previous applicants didn’t have top level domain names in mind.

St. Paul Postal Employees Credit Union has an existing trademark for a logo incorporating “.now”. Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a top level domain that matched this logo?

The trademark is for the logo and for financial services, so it wouldn’t conflict with the current application. Other companies have applied for .now in the past as well.

Of course, under current USPTO guidelines you can’t trademark a top level domain name.

Three user-submitted ways to make money from new top level domain names.

Yesterday I provided twelve examples of ways you can make money from the launch of new top level domain names. I received some comments with additional ideas and want to share them.

1. Michael Berkens noted that you can invest in some of the publicly traded companies that will profit from new TLDs. He mentioned Neustar and VeriSign (both are registries), Demand Media (owns domain registrar eNom), Tucows (domain registrar), and Web.com (owns Register.com).

2. Steve M recommended starting a blog that covers new top level domains and selling ads on it along with consulting services. I have to admit that there’s very little ad inventory out there to reach domain investors; if you have traffic you are set to get an onslaught of advertiser requests in the coming year.

3. Jon brought up something that I’m a bit confused about what exactly he’s suggesting, although it reminded me of one key way to profit that I left off my list: buying the .com equivalent of new TLDs. Think xxx.com will get a lot more traffic when .xxx launches? You bet. Confused web surfers will type domain.xxx.com at first. Many of them will also type domainxxx.com.

Company says former franchisee created site to defame it.

Tutoring and SAT test prep franchisor Sylvan Learning has sued the domain name SylvanFranchiseIssues.com for violating the anti-cybersquatting act.

The company alleges (pdf) the site was set up by a former franchisee in which it is involved in litigation.

Finding the alleged owner of the site was no small feat. The suit details Sylvan Learning’s attempts to track down the owner, starting with an inquiry to eNom’s whois privacy service. That lead the company to an address in London. A contact there said he used to offer a service where people could use his address when registering domain names. The trail then moved to India and then to a former franchisee in Ohio.

The site’s owner allegedly did more that just create the site to peeve Sylvan. He allegedly forwarded web traffic to the site from Sylvan’s corporate offices to competitor Huntington Learning Centers. He also allegedly bought Google Adwords for his site when someone searched for “Sylvan Franchises”.

Once tracked down, the site’s owner claimed that Sylvan had violated SylvanFranchiseIssues.com’s (SFI) terms of services by visiting the site:

the Terms of Use “prohibit employees, related parties or independent contractors of Sylvan Learning Inc., or any of its affiliates or related parties from accessing the SFI website.”

Clever.

If you visit the domain name right now it gives an error that the site is currently in maintenance mode.