Domain marketplace known for small ticket sales scores a big one.

Afternic is known for selling lots of domain names for a couple thousand dollars each. Not only is its expertise in high volume sales, but it also rarely gets to disclose its six figure sales.

That’s (sort of) the case with its latest big sale for $540,000 — the company can’t disclose the actual name.

But the company says it sold within 3 weeks of being listed with Afternic and the seller’s representative was Craig Pollack.

Afternic says it has a number of domains recently placed exclusively with the company:

Renovate.com
HomeMortgages.com
Bachelors.com
Exercising.com
Snowboarders.com
Administrators.com
Whitener.com
Retrievers.com, Beagles.com, and Dalmatian.com

Company behind Cydia app directory files lawsuit.

After losing a dispute under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP) in March, a jailbreak iPhone app store has filed a lawsuit in an effort to get the domain name Cydia.com.

Saurikit, LLC has a directory of apps that work on jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches that it hosts at cydia.saurik.com. It also has a U.S. trademark for “Cydia”.

Earlier this year it filed a UDRP to get Cydia.com. The UDRP panel ruled against Saurikit, noting that the domain name was registered six years before Saurikit started using the name Cydia.

The company’s in rem lawsuit against the Cydia.com domain name alleges that the owner of the domain name changed the content of the page from a parked page to one about Apple products after it contacted him.

Although the lawsuit (pdf) goes through details of the plaintiff’s communications with the domain owner, it strangely omits discussion about its domain name arbitration loss.

Pricing researcher to work for domain name marketplace.

After working with researcher Thies Lindenthal to create domain pricing index IDNX, Sedo has decided to bring him on as its Product Manager for Domain Pricing.

In a press release, Lindenthal said:

I am thrilled to combine my passions for the domain market and real estate research at Sedo,” said Lindenthal. “I look forward to continuing work on IDNX, and to bringing my research to Sedo in order to develop transparent, industry-leading domain pricing services for the marketplace.

Sedo has been committing significant resources into domain pricing in an effort to increase its inventory of priced domains, which can then be syndicated to other sites for immediate purchase through SedoMLS.

Lindethal and Sedo CEO Tim Schumacher will hold a webinar about IDNX tomorrow. Details are available here.

Conflict of interest, whether real or imagined, looks bad for ICANN as it faces fresh criticism over its new TLD plans.

ICANN has a problem.

As criticism mounts against its approval of the new top level domain name program, some groups are pointing fingers at an inherent conflict of interest.

The key example is former ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush.

One month after pushing through a vote on the new TLD program in his last meeting as Chairman he took a role with publicly-traded Top Level Domain Holdings, a company focused solely on profiting from new top level domain names.

There are no rules prohibiting this move, as Dengate Thrush pointed out when I interviewed him about the new role.

I can’t blame him for jumping at the opportunity. I also don’t think putting the program up for a vote in June had anything to do with profiting from it — I think it had to do with getting the program approved before his term as Chairman was over.

But it doesn’t matter. The problem is it just looks bad.

Recently Internet Advertising Bureau joined Association of National Advertisers in opposing the new top level domains program. Interestingly, I haven’t seen them point to this specific conflict. But other groups, including Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, have.

ICANN has received plenty of pushback on its new TLD plans both during the process of creating the applicant rules as well as after it was approved. Everyone has an opinion, and it would be wrong to point to Dengate Thrush’s move as proof that this is just a money grab.

But that won’t stop people from bringing attention to it, and that will bad for ICANN.

Risks of .xxx cybersquatting are minimal.

Yesterday I met with a group of entrepreneur friends and I explained the upcoming .xxx Sunrise B to them.

Sunrise B allows non-adult trademark holders to pay a one time fee to block their trademark from ever being registered in .xxx.

After explaining the process an inevitable question came up: “So, Andrew, do you think we should participate in Sunrise B”.

My answer was no. Unless you have a huge brand, I don’t see why you’d bother.

Concerns about cybersquatters picking up every equivalent .com under .xxx are unfounded. The main reason: .xxx domains are expensive. It’s unlikely someone would pay $75 or more to cybersquat on a small business’ brand. After a couple years they’d tire of paying the renewal fees.

There are other reasons I don’t think cybersquatting will be a big issue on .xxx, including rapid takedown and sponsored community requirements (assuming they are enforced).

But the big deterrent is price.

That said, here are some businesses I think should participate in Sunrise B:

- intellectual property law firms. It shows that you’re on top of your own IP.

- large businesses. That way you don’t have to explain to your CEO why you didn’t spend a small amount of money protecting your brand against a (rightly or wrongly) perceived risk.

- colleges and universities.