Former congressman guilty of reverse domain name hijacking, says WIPO panel.

Earlier today I wrote about how Ron Paul lost both of his domain disputes brought before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The disputes were filed against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org and were both heard by the same arbitration panel under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

The panel ruled that in the case of RonPaul.org, former congressman Paul is guilty of reverse domain name hijacking (pdf).

The owners had offered to sell RonPaul.com to Paul but also offered to give him RonPaul.org as an alternative if Paul didn’t want to buy the .com. Since Paul filed a UDRP against RonPaul.org after the owner offered to give it to him for free, the panel found the case to be reverse domain name hijacking.

Respondent has requested, based on the evidence presented, that the Panel make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. In view of the unique facts of this case, in which the evidence demonstrates that Respondent offered to give the Domain Name ronpaul.org to Complainant for no charge, with no strings attached, the Panel is inclined to agree. Instead of accepting the Domain Name, Complainant brought this proceeding. A finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking seems to this Panel to be appropriate in the circumstances.

The panel did not find reverse domain name hijacking in the RonPaul.com case (pdf), but determined that Paul did not prove a lack of rights or legitimate interest in the domain by the respondent. As a result, the panel ruled the domain name should remain with its current owner.

A UDRP arbitration panel will find so-called reverse domain name hijacking when it believes that a case was filed in bad faith in abuse of the administrative proceedings.

Both cases have a number of unique circumstances and conclusions, and show the convoluted ownership trail for the domains. They’re worth reading.

There is no financial penalty for reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP domain dispute.

They’re not as big, but several applied-for TLD strings get invalid queries.

ICANN is investigating internal names used by corporations and how they might conflict with applied-for top level domains.

.Home and .Corp are frequently among the top 10 queried invalid top level domains, but they aren’t the only ones.

ICANN hosts a page that shows invalid TLD queries. It seems to time out if you expand the timeframe to more than one day, so it’s hard to get a grasp on overall invalid TLD queries.

That said, some TLDs that companies have applied for other than .home and .corp are showing up on today’s list:

.Win – .Wins is listed in a document concerning invalid local names, but .win is popping up on today’s list. I believe it has something to do with Microsoft Windows. A Famous Four company applied for .win.

.Med – this TLD is already facing formal objections filed by the independent objector.

.Ice – there’s a brand application from IntercontinentalExchange, Inc., also known as ICE, for this TLD. Its current URL is TheIce.com.

Former politician denied relief in dispute over two Ron Paul domain names.

[Update: Paul found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in RonPaul.org case.]

Ron Paul has lost two separate domain name disputes filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The two cases covered RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org, and were part of a public spat between the domain owners, who say they are Ron Paul supporters, and the politician.

The owner of RonPaul.com offered to sell the domain name to Paul, or to give him the .org version for free. The domain owner claimed the value it was seeking in the sale was from its mailing list of Ron Paul supporters.

According to whois, there are two different owners for the .com and .org domains. However, given the communications, they are clearly linked in some way.

Both domain names are owned by groups in Panama.

The decisions have not been posted yet, and I will update the story when they are. I have obtained copies of the decisions. In the case of RonPaul.org, Paul was found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

It’s possible that the complaints were denied on the basis of laches, in that Paul had not disputed the ownership of the domains while the registrants built of a significant web presence on the domains. It was only after he exited congress that he went after the domains.

Nevertheless, the domain owners have made money selling Ron Paul merchandise and tried to sell the .com domain to Paul.

I’m not aware of any pending lawsuits that would have led WIPO to terminate the proceedings.

After many times on the auction block, Bargain.com finally sells.

Bargain.com sold for $150,000 during the Hilco Streambank auction yesterday. There was only one bidder for the domain.

Bargain.com had been offered for sale previously through both Sedo and Moniker, but with a much higher asking price. The last time it was offered at a Moniker auction it had a reserve price of over $750,000.

The lot also included the common typo Bargin.com.

Also selling in the auction was the three letter domain ETM.com. Four bidders competed for the domain, pushing the final price to $16,659.

VirtualMall.com failed to sell, as did domain and trademark packages for TJ Maxx Australia, Service Merchandise, Lamb and Flag, and BrandEquity.

A package including the domain names 1800MYWEBSITE.COM and 1-800-MYWEBSITE.COM plus the vanity phone numbers 1-800-MY WEB SITE, 1-877-MY WEB SITE, and 1-866-MY WEBSITE sold prior to the auction beginning. The auction page shows one bid at $35,000, so I suspect that was the selling price.

GoDaddy.com has replaced Danica Patrick with a real small business customer.

For most of last five years, GoDaddy girl Danica Patrick has graced the GoDaddy.com home page. Over the past few months GoDaddy has tried a couple different approaches, as you can see at Screenshots.com.

Today there’s a new home page design with another “girl”, but she’s not a celebrity spokesperson. She’s a real small business customer.

Sindy Alexandra, a stay at home mom and photographer, has taken over the home page. The page promotes GoDaddy’s updated web site builder, which the company hopes is a key starting point for small business customers. There’s a link to a video that explains how Alexandra used GoDaddy’s web site building tools to get online.

As the company tries to make itself the starting point for small and medium businesses, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more profiles like this on the home page.

Of course, if it turns out Danica pulls better than Sindy, then expect Danica to make a return soon.

(Hat tip: James)