Panelist rules against drugstore.

Drug store chain Walgreen might need some Advil after reading a recent decision handed down by National Arbitration Forum.

A single member panel ruled that Indian company Walgreens Realty International can keep the domain names walgreenstravels.com and walgreensholidays.com.

At the time Walgreen filed the complaint there were merely parked pages at the domain names. The respondent created simple web sites on the domains after receiving the complaint.

The panelist found that the domain names are confusingly similar to the Walgreens mark and that the respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain names. The respondent argued that it hired 50 people to work for its tourism business, but the panelist said the respondent had not provided proof of its activities and supposedly well known name in India.

At this point in the complaint it looked like a home run for Walgreen. But the panelist was unimpressed with the evidence it provided that the domain name was registered in bad faith.

I was kind of surprised by this conclusion after reading the first part of the case, but of course I don’t have all of the documentation. It seems that Walgreen would have needed to show the respondent tried to sell the domain name, had a history of cybersquatting, or that the respondent profited from the domain in order to seal the victory.

Whether this loss is the lawyer’s fault or not, I’m sure Walgreen isn’t happy.

Reader collates stats about your blog in an easy-to-consume format.

Google didn’t own FeedBurner when I started Domain Name Wire, and I also didn’t want to trust my RSS feed to a third party. That means I syndicate using plain old RSS.

Fortunately, some major RSS readers including Google Reader now show you how many subscribers your blog has.

Bloggers can see their full stats on the Google Webmaster console, but anyone can view the total number of subscribers (using Google Reader) for a blog they subscribe to.

For example, here’s what Reader publicly shows:

That’s for my main feed; the webmaster console shows additional feed (such as atom) subscription numbers.

While the subscriber count itself is neat, I also like how you get a quick snapshot of your blogging activity. The blue columns represent the number of posts I for each hour of the day. You’ll notice most of my posts come in the 10 am hour, followed by the 12 pm hour CDT.

You can also view this chart by day of week and over the past 30 days.

This is interesting for bloggers, but what might be more interesting is looking at similar data of popular blogs. You might get some good data about “what works”.

Hundreds of domain names registered as Hurricane Irene approached the east coast.

Whenever there’s a notable natural disaster or event, some people try to cash in with domain names.

With Hurricane Irene making waves in the news (sorry) over the weekend, people started snapping up related domain names.

TasteReports.com shows 196 domain names including the keyword “hurricane” were registered last Friday and Saturday alone. To be sure, not all of them had to do with Hurricane Irene. But plenty of them did, ranging from NJhurricaneirene.com to HurricaneIreneRelief2011.com to HurricaneIreneDonations.com.

And, following the typical pattern we’ve seen after past events, some of these domain names end up on eBay.

Right now opportunists are offering DonateHurricaneIrene.com for $499 (“perfect domain name for non-profit organizations who want to collect donations to help people affected by this disaster”) and IreneNews.com for just $50.

Sigh.

It depends on if you’re investing or gambling.

I was reading a blog post on The Hill this morning about a guy trying to sell Romney-Perry2012.com and Perry-Romney2012.com for $50,000.

You read stories about this all the time as people try to bankroll on current events.

But here’s what I found interesting:

He has bought other domains in the past, but without much luck.

“I have lost a bundle actually, and they’re the worst investment I’ve ever gotten into,” Jeffreys said. But he said it is hard to resist the temptation to buy more addresses for the chance to score a big payout.

The practice is “essentially gambling,” he said.

This is interesting because it sheds light on two different mentalities when it comes to domain investing: investing vs. gambling.

Here’s how I’d define these:

Domain Investing: You buy domains that mostly have existing value that you think will increase over time. Only a small percentage of your portfolio is hand registered these days. Many of your domains get type-in traffic. The majority of your portfolio is relatively liquid, with a smaller portion dedicated to opportunistic and hand-registered domains. You turn over 2%+ of your portfolio a year through sales. Although 2% is low, it’s not that low for domains.

Domain Gambling: Most of your portfolio is recently hand registered. You try to take advantage of event-driven domains. You never price your domains and ask for big sums if someone is interested in buying them. You register lots of domains in alternative extensions. Basically, you’re counting on that one big domain sale to make or break you. You sell fewer than 2% of your domains a year.

What do you think. Do you agree with these definitions?

Judge sides with Oversee.net’s Motion to Dismiss.

Oversee.net got a big win today in a lawsuit filed by former employee Monte Cahn.

The judge granted Oversee.net’s Motion to Dismiss (pdf) five claims ranging from Intentional and Negligent Misrepresentation to Unfair Competition.

Oversee.net has argued that the case is merely a breach of contract case. When it filed the motion to dismiss, its lawyers wrote that the case “is nothing more than an alleged breach of contract case” but that “Unfortunately, in a veritable ‘kitchen sink’ pleading, the Complaint contains a hodgepodge of claims against Oversee and two of its officers…”.

The judge seems to agree, at least with how Cahn plead his case. In his decision he wrote “The essence of Plaintiff’s claims at issue is an attempt to plead a breach of contract claim in tort.”

However, the judge dismissed the claims without prejudice, noting that Cahn can “refile his claim
for intentional misrepresentation/fraudulent inducement, that claim must be pled with particularity
pursuant to Rule 9(b).”