Busted seven figure domain name deal comes to resolution.

It looks like the end result of a legal battle over Women.com has ended with the transfer of the domain name to Done! Ventures.

Done! Ventures thought it had a deal to purchase Women.com and Women.net from NBC Universal for $1 million last year. But then NBC allegedly backed out when its then President & CEO Jeff Zucker apparently vetoed the deal.

Done sued NBC to get it to go through with the sale. It later sued domain name broker Sedo for $10 million for allegedly failing to enforce the deal.

Right as depositions in the lawsuit were to begin, the two parties struck a settlement.

Although the terms of the settlement haven’t been released, the domain names just transferred to Done! Ventures’ founder Benjamin Padnos today.

NBC acquired the domain names when it bought iVillage.com.

Descriptive domain name drives 78% of business for FreeConferenceCall.com.

Most Domain Name Wire readers understand the power of a descriptive domain name.

Here’s more proof: the founder of FreeConferenceCall.com says his domain name drives 78% of his signups.

David Erickson explained this to the L.A. times:

With not much cash to start his business, let alone buy publicity, Erickson knew the service’s name had to be perfect. At 3 a.m. Oct. 26, 2001, after hours of agonizing over a name, Erickson thought, “Why not just call it what it is?” The next day he checked Web registrars and FreeConferenceCall.com was available. “I kept checking the spelling because I was thinking ‘You know, I probably spelled it wrong, and I’m going to release it spelled wrong,’” he said. “All of a sudden it just seemed like the name I had to have.”

With an obvious name like that, generating call volume was no issue, and the name still drives 78% of sign-ups…

Indeed, “calling it was it is” was perhaps Erickson best marketing move. He also has a brilliant business model, by the way.

Moniker auction attracting lots of bids with one more day left.

28 domain names in Moniker’s DOMAINfest Meet-Up NYC auction have received bids with still one day to go, although only 14 domain names have met their reserves.

The auction is taking place on SnapNames.

The top domain to meet its reserve so far is Teeb.com at $5,250 with 4 bidders.

Hardcore.com has a bid of $125,000 but it has a reserve of up to $250,000.

Some of the domains that have met their reserves and are still under $500 are AirportSecurityScanners.com, Qse.net, and SundayEvenings.com.

For those with deeper pockets, five domain names are listed at over $1 million: Americans.com, Hot.com, End.com, SouthAfrica.com, and TopMovies.com

Company co-president explains Oversee.net’s business shift.

News of Oversee.net’s layoffs didn’t come as a huge surprise last week. This sort of shuffling the deck is common when there’s turnover at the top.

I caught up with Scott Morrow, co-President of Oversee.net, to find out what’s going on at the company.

Morrow told me that Oversee.net now has three strategic focus areas.

First, it will leverage its core assets of DomainSponsor and DOMAINfest Global. It will expand these further outside the limited domainer crowd.

“The domain industry is evolving and many of our clients are moving from parked pages to building out sites, taking advantage of affiliate opportunities and lead generation,” explained Morrow.

The company will still be involved with monetization but it won’t just be parked pages.

Second, it will build out its marketing services platform “to better value or add value to the traffic that we support.”

This involves projects like categorizing and profiling traffic to better understand it. The company is also investing heavily in email and mobile.

Third, Oversee.net will continue to build out its own properties, particularly in the travel, consumer finance, and retail sectors.

Despite the layoffs, Oversee.net is still hiring. The company is looking for engineers, developers, and sales people.

Morrow says the company is still going strong into Europe as well.

As one of the largest companies in the domain name space, Oversee.net is seen as somewhat of a bellwether. It will be interesting to see if there are similar shifts are other companies in the space.

Panelist finds it odd that Name.com makes domain registrant responsible for its own “coming soon” pages.

UDRP panelist Warwick A. Rothnie has called a clause in Name.com’s registration agreement related to parked pages an “extraordinary arrangement”.

The clause basically says that Name.com will put up ads on your recently registered domain name but that the registrant is responsible for making sure the ads don’t violate third party intellectual property rights.

In what might be thought an extraordinary arrangement, the clause purports to impose on the registrant an obligation to ensure that any such advertising does not violate any third party intellectual or other proprietary rights.

Although Rothnie finds this clause extraordinary, he says ultimately the agreement a domain registrant makes with its registrar is what it is:

Be that as it may, the appropriateness of that arrangement is a matter between the Registrar and the Respondent. It is plain, however, that the terms of the Domain Name Registration Agreement gave the Respondent power to choose whether or not to use the Registrar’s Parked Domain Service. Moreover, it is clear from the record in this case that the Respondent was able to ensure that advertising of the Complainant’s competitors ceased upon receipt of the Complainant’s demands.

In these circumstances, it is plain that the Respondent was in a position in which he could control whether or not “pay-per-click” link advertising appeared on the website to which the disputed domain name resolved and the content of that advertising. Accordingly, the Panel is not prepared to find that the Respondent has rebutted the prima facie case raised by the Complainant. The Panel therefore finds that the Complainant has established the second requirement under the Policy.

Most panelists don’t understand the difference between a domain registrar parked page and a parked page the registrant creates, and this is something that needs to be addressed. At least one UDRP panelist has used common sense when it comes to this distinction.

Fortunately, Rothnie did find in favor of the respondent in this case over IMD.comtv.