Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Domain Name Industry News

Featured Domains

Xbox Series X? How about the A, B, and C?

by — Uncategorized 4 Comments

Microsoft registered domains for its new Xbox Series X that include every letter of the alphabet.

Picture of Xbox Series X, a tall black box shape and a game controller

Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X, and registered names for series A, B, C, etc. at the same time.

At the end of last week, Microsoft announced the new Xbox Series X.

As is typical, the company also registered domain names related to the new console, including XboxseriesX.com.

Here’s what’s weird, though: the company registered the same domain and changed the series letter. 26 times. Times multiple domain extensions.

The company registered XboxseriesA.com, XboxseriesB.com, XboxseriesC.com, and so forth, all the way to XboxseriesZ.com.

It even registered these variations in other top level domains including .ca, .net, .fr, .com.br, .at, and even .microsoft. And more.

That’s 26 domains per top level domain, spanning many top level domains. That’s a lot of domains, and I can’t imagine it will do much good.

Why the Steve Jobs decision was wrong

by — Policy & Law 6 Comments

In this guest post, Attorney Paul Keating writs that the recent UDRP decision for SteveJobs.com was flawed.

Blue image with the letters UDRP

The SteveJobs.com decision troubles me deeply.  In terms of trademark, I see it as attempting to shove a round peg into a square hole and ignoring the many gap.  Although the outcome is perhaps the result of an inexperienced foreign Respondent, I would have expected more.

By way of background, my search for the Claimant dug up several addresses in Palo Alto.  These appeared to be a registered address and not active business locations.  I did not find any website that was related to the Claimant.  A reverse WHOIS search at DomainTools did not show that Claimant had any registered domain names.  In short, I found no evidence that Claimant really existed, let alone that it had used the asserted trademark in any manner whatsoever.

The WIPO TMDM trademark site shows 66 registered trademarks for “Steve Jobs”, 19 of which are registered by third parties unrelated to Mr. Jobs.  Indeed, the 1st registration listed was filed in France on September 2011 by Yohann Uzan. There was one US registration but it included “Steve Jobs” in a laundry list of famous names.

Claimant’s earliest trademark registration was in 2018 (it has since filed numerous registrations in different jurisdictions), all of which are outside of the US.  I could not see any registration documentation that made a “first-use” claim that predated the 2018 application.

The panel concludes that a common law right had been established as of 1999, thus pre-dating the domain registration.  The conclusion is based on the following: Click here to continue reading…

A look at .Net in China

by — Uncategorized 2 Comments

.Net faces a lot of competition in China.

In my series of articles to study the Chinese domain market, I have already covered the big picture, .cn, and .com. Today, let’s look at .net. This analysis is based on data I have collected from China Internet Network Information Center reports published since 1997.

Pie chart showing selection of top level domains in China

The chart shows a breakdown of domains registered in China as of December, 2018. As you can see, .net accounts for a mere 2.9% or 1.1 million domains. While .cn and .com are considered mainstream extensions by corporate China, .net is often looked upon as just a niche extension.

Chart showing the number of registered .net domains in China

The chart shows moderate growth over the years. The surge in 2015 and 2016 might have been result of the “Chips” boom centered around .com but spreading to other extensions. In the last two years, however, growth has gone down. Long term, the .net extension faces tough challenges because Chinese companies tend to stick to .com and .cn, and there is added competition from many similar extensions introduced in the last few years, such as:

  1. .site
  2. .online
  3. .website
  4. .network
  5. .wang
  6. .网址

Of particular concern are .wang and .网址. The former is a Pinyin word (网= net) and the latter is a Chinese IDN extension which means “net address”. Both extensions are very similar to .net semantically. So, there is a lot of choices for end users if they want something related to the net or network, which is not good for .net.

Nonetheless, there is still hope – albeit a small one. Although there is no company listed in the 2018 Top 100 Chinese Internet Companies Report using .net in its corporate domain, this changes in the 2019 list where No. 84 Loyo (a game developer) owns the matching Loyo.net. Will corporate adoption of .net increase? Time will tell.

In short, .net is a very small segment in the Chinese domain market, but some demand from end users does exist, as shown in the case of Loyo.net.

Rolf Larsen acquires Desktop.com domain name for his next venture

by — Domain Sales 9 Comments

Desktop will make it easier for companies to manage web apps.

Logo for DesktopIf you’re like me, you manage a lot of web apps.

A CRM system. Email. Trello. Smartsheet. Zapier.

And that’s just for me as a an individual. Imagine running a business in which you need to correctly provision access to apps to your employees based on their needs, and then revoke access when they leave.

That’s the problem Rolf Larsen experiences with his business, and that he hopes to solve with his new company Desktop. Larsen is founder of RegistryOffice and recently sold .Global to Afilias. His companies have many employees spread across the world. In total, he counts over 50 web apps they use.

Desktop will make it easier for businesses to handle the distribution, organization and security of web apps used by their employees and contractors.

Larsen is going all in on the venture, starting with the domain name. He acquired Desktop.com from Idealab. The business will pay for the domain over two years and already made a significant down payment on the domain.

Even as someone who ran a new top level domain, Larsen understands the value of a great .com domain name. He explained to DNW:

New domain extensions are great alternatives for branding, but a keyword .com is still by far the top choice if it can be had. Most often it cannot be purchased, at least for an affordable amount to a startup. Or it’s simply being used by a big company even if not in a competing space.

The keyword .com will give a company a recognition it wouldn’t get with a keyword new extension. There are some great combo names using two keywords, where the keyword behind the dot would be the extension. But even those are not yet up there in recognition as a one-keyword .com.

New extensions are great in defining the vertical sector of the brand. I have always advocated that brand owners should register all available relevant extensions for their brand. I chose that the most relevant extensions (even counting ccTLDs) for my startup would be .app and .cloud. This is because they communicate how the desktop service will be distributed.

Since I chose to use a well known and much-used keyword to brand my company, the .com would simply be hard to avoid in branding. Not all keywords are good for branding though, but I do believe the keyword desktop is.

Idealab was represented by Sedo in the deal. Born during the .com boom, Idealab owns a number of great domain names. It has previously sold names including Clothes.com and Top10.com. It was also involved in the commercialization of .TV. Also of note to domain investors, it incubated GoTo, which invented pay-per-click search marketing.

In a Q&A with Sedo, Larsen noted:

The impact I expect from this domain is a faster growth rate and more PR just due to the branding. Hopefully, getting serious funding for growth should be easier too, since branding is already established.

Larsen anticipates launching Desktop next year.

10 more end user sales

by — Domain Sales 2 Comments

Here are some of the end users that bought domain names at Sedo.

Picture of bundles of 500 euro notes with the words "End User Domain Sales" and the logo for Sedo

Sedo’s top public sale of the week was OneHome.com for $70,000. It’s not yet clear who bought it, but a Google search uncovers several candidates.

Here’s a look at some of the domains end users bought at Sedo this past week. See prior end user lists here.

OneHome.com $70,000 – A MarkMonitor client bought the domain name. I searched for trademarks to see if a company recently filed anything. There are a couple of trademarks for ‘One Home’, but they date to 2015 or before. There are several candidates if you search for the term.

Quaestor.com $26,000 – Here’s the story behind this one.

Mischanlage.de €11,900- Forwards to Schick-Bau.de. Schick is a family surname. This is a construction company in Germany that specializes in concrete and concrete pumps. Mischanlage means mixing plant.

ModZero.com $4,995- An Swiss company providing security analysis.

TechGrove.com $4,900 – Computer Brokers USA in Missouri.

LemonPlay.com 4,000 – An online game studio still in development.

Karlo.com €3,700 – It looks like the buyer’s first name is Karlo.

PizzaPasta.de €3,500 – Forwards to Pizza-Pasta.net, a German-based Italian restaurant and food delivery franchise.

Wohali.com $3,250 – Wohali Partners owns the domain name WohaliPartners.com. It doesn’t seem to have launched yet, but it was smart to acquire this shorter domain.

SumitomoChemical.com $3,177 – This domain was bought by Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., a major Japanese chemical company that currently uses Sumitomo-Chem.co.jp as its main website.

RSP.eu €3,040 – Forwards to RestrukturierungsPartner.com, a German consulting company specializing in corporate restructuring. This is much shorter!

DallasCoins.com $2,900 – Forwards to HoustonRareCoins.com, the website for D of J Coins & Collectibles.

NegativeSEO.com $2,500 – Altitude SEO bought this domain. Negative SEO is taking actions that hurt a competitor’s search rankings.

AuptitBonheur.com €2,390 – Website for an art gallery in Québec.

HypeCBD.com €2,200- Hype Energy Drinks bought a domain for the latest craze. By the way, it owns the domain Hype.com.

HappyNappers.com $2,200 – A children’s stuffed animal that turns into a sleep sack.

Tuerenwerk.de €2,000- Forwards to Türenwerk.com, a company that produces security doors for homes and houses.