Patent says it’s hard to find available domains, marketing says most domain lookups are successful.
When do your company’s intellectual property efforts contradict your marketing efforts?
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just issued patent number 9,065,794 (pdf) to Verisign for “Systems and methods for providing domain name suggestions”. The patent describes ways of finding domain names based on user preferences and external data sources.
I’m struck by a statement in the patent:
A distinctive, easy-to-remember domain name is an important part of a web presence for individuals and businesses. Unfortunately, there are currently a limited number of domain names, and many desirable domain names in the most popular TLDs (e.g., .com) have already been taken. Thus, it is difficult to identify desirable domain names that are available (unregistered), otherwise known as non-existent domains (NXDomains).
It is difficult to identify desirable domain names that are available…
Yet, according to Verisign’s marketing, 7 out of 10 .com availability checks successful and short .COM names are in ample supply.
Go figure.
Joseph Peterson says
Digging up gold can be challenging, but the earth’s reserves are not depleted.
Taylor says
VeriSign Marketing: 7 out of 10 times a registrant checks the availability of a desired .com domain, it’s available to register
VeriSign Legal Team: It is difficult to identify desirable .com domain names that are available
Hi Pot, meet Kettle. If only there were more extensions where consumers could find a fresh tap of desirable, descriptive names…
Francis says
Taylor, if you are referring to new gtlds, they are not a valid consideration due to their high likelihood of consumer confusion and traffic leakage to the .com. Knowing this, who would not want to own the .com instead. No value to the new gtlds at all. Totally worthless.
Paul says
We all know which team is telling the truth. Of course .com’s are difficult to register and yes, it’s going to get much worse. I do not see gtlds as the solution though. The rollout was really bungled and with the registries all keeping the good names to themselves, you may as well get a .com, usually for less money and without the risk of losing hits. Despite the recent (bogus) sale reports, gtlds are not in demand and simply not selling. No one even knows about them nor are they interested. They are .mobi regugitated. It is a .com world and this trend will clearly continue.