Seller of white iPhones sued.

Apple has sued the owner of WhiteiPhone4Now.com (as well as the domain name itself), but then filed to dismiss the case on the same day (pdf).

However, the dismissal is “without prejudice”, meaning it can be refiled. It’s possible Apple was already in settlement talks with the owner or is refiling the case elsewhere.

Apple alleges the owner used the site to sell conversion kits to make the traditionally black iPhone white.

The full conversion kit including front and back panels sold for a whopping $279, which means customers were certainly concerned with their status. (Apple plans to sell white iPhones in the future.)

According to Apple, the domain owner knew he was selling a product emblazoned with the Apple logo but not authorized by Apple.

He stopped using the domain name last Fall when Apple contacted him. The domain is now a parked page.

Traffic quality comes down to one key result: conversion.

When domainers talk about “traffic quality” they usually talk about the quality of the visitor. Here are four common types of visitor:

1. direct type-in
2. typo type-in
3. referral link from web site
4. search visitor (rare for pure parked pages)
5. paid traffic

This is certainly important. But it’s only part of the equation.

At the end of the day a quality visitor (or quality click) means that the person is more likely to convert for the advertiser than other visitors.

Let’s say you have the same exact visitor. In one case he may turn into a low quality click and in another case a high quality one. How can this be?

It depends on what they clicked on and their mindset when getting there.

Back in the day some parking companies let you set your keyword to whatever you wanted. So you might have a domain name about baseball, but fill it up with links for mortgages since it’s a high paying keyword.

Some of those visitors to that baseball page may click on the mortgage ad. Some might be genuinely interested in mortgages, and a small number might convert for the advertisers. But the users weren’t actively looking for mortgages at the time, so their likelihood to convert is lower than if they were on a mortgage domain name.

The quality of this visitor to the advertiser is low if the ads are unrelated to his or her intent at the moment they visited the site.

Another example is the misled consumer. Let’s say they visit a domain like 2percentmortgages.com (made up). The first ad reads “Get a free mortgage quote now!”.

When they click on that link they’re going to be disappointed to see quoted rates between 3%-6%, and are less likely to actually convert.

So the quality of your visitors is made up of a number of factors. At the end of the day you should ask yourself, “will this visitor convert for the advertiser?”.

Registrar files two applications for ideas related to helping people find book web sites.

Go Daddy has filed two patent applications related to helping web users connect to book web sites.

U.S. applications 12/625892 and 12/625919 (pdf) provide for “redirecting a user to a book’s website after submitting a request for information about the book. The book’s website or a link to the website may be displayed to the user on a client browser.”

For example, a user could type an ISBN number into an interface and be redirected to the book’s web site.

So what does this have to do with domain names? It’s a way to encourage authors and publishers to register more domain names.

An author might be notified of multiple domain names to register, including the book’s ISBN, the book name with alternate top level domain names, and perhaps his own name in .me to create a biography web site.

Upon registering the domains, the author or publisher may be notified that it appears these domain names are related to a book, and offering to forward the domain names to the make book web site.

The applications were filed in 2009 and just published today.

Sporting conference files dispute over three domain names.

The Pac-10 conference, which now has twelve teams with the addition of Colorado and Utah and will rebrand as the Pac-12, is again turning to the World Intellectual Property Forum in an effort to get domain names related to its new brand.

The group filed a complaint (and won) over pac-12network.com, pac12network.com, and pac-12network.org. All three are registered to an Ontario man.

The collegiate athletic conference first used World Intellectual Property Forum (WIPO) for a domain name dispute earlier this year when it tried to get the domain name Pac12.com. The owner of that domain name decided to avoid the WIPO process by suing the Pac-10 instead.

The suit was later dropped, but Pac12.com is still in the hands of a Utah man. He directs it to a page with a dozen products related to the late rapper Tupac, calling it a “12 Pac of Tupac”.

The Pacific-10 has been a bit behind with its web presence. Pac10.com was owned by publicly traded Marchex until 2009.

Company with $5 billion in annual sales decides to try to nab domain through arbitration rather than buy it. The price just went up.

The owner of TDS.com has successfully defended his domain name from Telephone and Data Systems, Inc in a UDRP case.

Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. is #450 on this year’s Fortune 500 list and generated nearly $5 billion in revenue last year.

TDS.com was originally registered way back in 1991. The current registrant, Daniel Wang, started working for the domain owner Trident Data Systems in 1997 and was listed as the Administrative and Technical Contacts for the domain name as of 2001.

Trident was then acquired by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GDAIS).

In 2009 Wang worked with the company to transfer the domain name to his ownership.

Wang later parked the domain name, which may be where Telephone and Data Systems saw its opportunity.

The panel found that the complainant didn’t prove that Wang lacked rights or legitimate interests in the domain name.