Company started with longer domain name before buying the “right” one.

I was reading an article about ReadItLater earlier today when I noticed the article linked to ReadItLaterList.com instead of ReadItLater.com.

The popular service offers apps that allow you to save web pages to read later. So “Read It Later” is a great name. Obviously ReadItLaterList.com isn’t a great domain name.

But when I typed in ReadItLater.com I found that it forwarded to ReadItLaterList.com. I emailed company founder Nate Weiner to understand why he went with the “list” domain, and he confirmed my suspicion: he bought the better ReadItLater.com domain name after he launched the business.

Apparently some of his users were confused originally as well. One even commented on the support page:

Any plans to acquire the domain name readitlater.com?

I keep accidentally going there, only to be reminded by the domain parking page and pop-ups that I forgot the “list”.

Smart move acquiring the domain name before its price increased any more.

Popular site wants typo of its web address.

Meme site “Texts From Last Night“, which publishes drunken texts (and texts about drunken nights) has filed a dispute against the owner of a similar domain name.

The site, hosted at TextsFromLastNight.com, is asking World Intellectual Property Forum to award it the domain name TextFromLastNight.com (where ‘text’ is singular).

Texts From Last Night was founded in 2009 and receives over 400,000 unique visitors per month, according to Compete.

Compete shows only a handful of visitors to the “typo”, although I suspect a lot of people access the site when they’re drunk and miss a letter or two.

The domain name in dispute was registered just a couple months after the meme site was founded. It forwards to a quiz site that shows a mockup of the actual TextsFromLastNight.com site in the background with a survey pop up.

Domainer with parked domain name ensnared in lawsuit.

Imagine you’re a domain investor, just going along and buying domain names and parking them like everyone else. You know you may get hit with a cease & desist every once in a while from an aggressive trademark lawyer. But that’s about it.

But then one day you find yourself named in a massive apparel counterfeiting ring.

That’s what happened to VL Raymer. Raymer owns the domain name Primp.com and has owned it since 1998, she says. In May this year, Industry Concept Holdings Inc. and Primp Inc filed a lawsuit against Raymer and at least 10 other parties on a number of charges related to counterfeiting Primp goods. According to the suit (originally filed under seal):

13. Plaintiffs are informed and believe and thereupon allege that at all times relevant hereto defendant VL RAYMER is based at P.O. Box 1118 Gilroy, CA 95021 and has advertised, distributed, offered for sale, and sold merchandise wrongfully bearing counterfeits and infringements of Primp’s Primp Trademarks and Copyrighted Works on primp.com in this judicial district and the State of California.

A look at historical thumbnails for Primp.com shows nothing but parked pages.

Further perplexing Raymer was this statement in the original lawsuit:

Upon information and belief, Elgort, Lorber, Montoya, Payne, Garcia, Pacific Apparel, LLC, Saenz, Hautelook, Marquette Commercial Finance and VL Raymer (collectively “Defendants”) are all related to each other.

Raymer says she has no idea who these people and companies are.

It gets more interesting. The original suit states:

Primp’s Primp trademark was distinctive at the time the infringing domain names itsprimp.com and primp.com were registered, and was, and is protected by the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125.

But Raymer says she was the original 1998 registrant of Primp.com, which is five years before the “first use in commerce” of the Primp trademark in 2003. In the Memorandum of Points and Authorities, it states that Raymer registered Primp.com “to facilitate the counterfeiting of the Primp clothing”, which is also curious if she registered the domain many years before Primp was around.

The plaintiffs have since filed an amended complaint. It appears to keep Raymer in the defendant list, not mention her location and charge upfront, but mention her again in the ACPA claim.

A case of mistakenly being added to a counterfeiting ring?

Former Oversee.net employee finds new home at Rook Media.

Longtime Domain Sponsor account manager Joe Higgins may have left his employer of the last 6 1/2 years recently, but he didn’t leave the domain name industry.

Higgins has joined new domain name parking company Rook Media.

Rook Media was formed by former Name Drive senior managers who left after the latter was sold. It was in a private beta with large domainers since February and opened up to the masses in June.

The company handles all types of domain names but its founders have a lot of experience in multi-lingual domain name monetization.

Higgins will help expand Rook’s monetization offerings while also helping domainers with brokerage and alt-
monetization needs. He will maintain an office in Los Angeles.

Here’s a “sucks” UDRP the complainant will easily win.

Living Spaces Furniture, LLC recently filed a UDRP against the owner of LivingSpacesSucks.com.

Thinking this was perhaps a site created by a disgruntled customer, I typed in the URL and found this:

This will be a slam dunk for the furniture company.

You can generally own a “sucks” domain name under a couple circumstances:

1. You actually use it to criticize the company

2. You don’t benefit financially from it

I’ve seen gripe sites that show ads — that’s a big no-no. But this example is worse. It’s clear that the owner wants to sell the domain name, and they’re even making a not-so-veiled threat that it will be used against the company if the domain is never purchased.

This is one of those cases that I don’t blame the complainant for filing a UDRP even if the registrant offers to sell the domain name for less than the cost of filing a UDRP. I say go for it.