The domain business is a good business with a bad image. What can be done about it?
Earlier today I read DNJournal’s weekly sales recap. There were some good sales, including RoomDividers.com at $75,000 (congratulations, Rick). But all of the good sales were overshadowed by a couple bad sales: Mozzilla.com for $40,000 and wwwMatch.com at $11,100.
Neither of these domain names would stand a chance in UDRP challenges. Both of them are typos of famous web sites. These are the types of domain sales that make the industry look bad.
To make matters worse, Mozzilla.com was sold on DNForum, a respected domain name forum. What signal does it send that domainers are trading trademark typos on a major forum? (It’s not just DNForum, mind you.) Mozzilla.com used to make money from affiliate links for downloading the Google toolbar with Firefox. Now it has a link to download Firefox, but when you click on the link it sends you to various offers such as other toolbars and registry cleaner software.
So here’s the question: Are legitimate domainers, who find themselves under pressure with domain parking and from legal interests such as CADNA, going to sit around and watch this happen? Or are we going to help clean it up? Are we going to pressure forums to close threads that involve obvious trademarks? Are we going to ask the companies we do business with to stop auctioning off trademark typos? Or are we just going to wait until our business is stolen from beneath us?
There was a time when typosquatting was par for the course. It didn’t hurt the domain industry too much, either. But make no mistake — if you own generic domain names you are paying the price for other people and their nefarious ways. You can sit around and watch your revenue drop, or you can help move the industry to more legitimate heights.
Sign me up…..I just put pressure on Godaddy yesterday by speaking to one of their “Quality Control” reps that wanted my opinion on Godaddy and TDNAM.
I let them know they are shooting themselves in the foot as well as shooting me in the foot…. and I am not happy with the TM being sold anymore.
Andrew; Great post. I followed up on it at the above link. Pressure from within the domain industry is the only way to stem the tide of cybersquatting. The UDRP and ACPA will never make it happen.
Well done Andrew. Every VERY obvious TM infringing opportunity I find, I call the company’s legal department ask to speak to their IP lawyers and tell them about the obvious names that obviously infringe on THEIR intellectual property. I let them know how the UDRP and WIPO works. Its very simple to do, works great, and they appreciate it. Sometimes they even send you complimentary gifts. Anyone who ignores the extremely obvious TM infringing names and does nothing is in effect feeding CADNA, destroying the search advertising business, and jeopardizing all generic non-infringing names. If the business is going to get clean, we need to grab brooms ourselves.
I too felt the same when I saw that these 2 names have been sold at DNForum and Namejet.
I was even more surprised when I saw that
wwwMATCH.com was created on 2008-08-25,
just about 10 days ago!!
created 10 days ago, and selling for $11,100
6 days later?
(since the Reported Domain Sales are for- Mon. August 25, 2008 – Sun. August 31,2008)
AND being an obvious typo of MATCH.com ?
I’m not sure that the real MATCH.com is even aware of this sale..if it is a genuine one!
Good luck to the new owner
(If it is not MATCH.com themselves!)
Andrew, I was thinking the same thing when I read the weekly report over at DNJ. I actually got a bit flush and panicky when I saw the Mozzilla.com sale. I felt a bit sick too. I was initially irritated that Ron listed it, but quickly got my wits about me – as he is just reporting these sales.
Are there any forums that dont allow this clear case of typosquatting-type sales? Maybe we should start one: Noblatantcyberortyposquattingdomainnameforum.com
I wonder if it’s taken?
Call the TM infringers on it. It’s wrong. It can’t be defended. And anyone with a modicum of good sense will not infringe on another’s trademark.
This demonstrates why the domain aftermarket is still stuck in 101. Most of these domains reported on DNjournal if anyone cares to look closely are mostly “made up” names snapped up by domainers and not end-business users. Infact I’m pretty certain most of these names including all the Afternic an Sedo names regularly reported are bought by domain speculators and not end business users. I would argue most of these made up names are speculative JUNK!!
Elliot wrote candidly on his blog this week, ElliotsBlog.com, the type of domain names he was looking to buy. Names that describe a service or product use, such as truckrims.com or washingmachines.com or one i like to use quite frequently, laserskintreatment.co.uk. These are the sort of names that will eventually be sought after
when the end user begins to buy aftermarket domain name big time…thanks partly to the new google chrome and yahoo’s predictive text search.
If you take a closer look, RoomDivider.com sold for $75,000.00 because it makes perfect sense to the end-business user, which is why Rick Schwartz is right most of the time, even though a lot of people don’t like his comments. He thoroughly understands how domains should be valued and lets face it, roomdivider.com would probably only have fetched $2500.00 at best at Afternic or if say Sedo or Moniker did one of those meaningless appraisals.
The whole point of what I’m making here is, there are two sides to this domain business at the moment, one side led by speculative domainers that buy junk made up names that we generally see reported on DNjournal(Ron Jackson does a fantastic job with DNjournal and I’m sure he looks forward to reporting more respectable sales, as the industry improves) and the other side is quality generic “keyword” names that are sold for what the real underlying values are essentially worth, hence the high prices such as roomdividers.com $75K or ireport.com $750K .
There is a massive bubble of junk made up domains acquired by domainers who really think they are investors, and like Rich Dad Poor day says, you are not really an investor unless you really understand the true underlying value of what you are investing in!
Most of those made up names make no sense to the ultimate end business user, in an internet world dominated by true “keyword” terms that people generally search for.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who felt this way when reading the latest sales report.
Stuart, you are right not to blame Jackson for the sales reports. He’s just reporting the facts. He can decide which categories he wants to report. I personally don’t announce any “hard core” adult domains. I have people get on my case for writing about the bad parts of our industry, but we can just sugar coat things.
belshass, the reason wwwMatch.com has a new date is because it expired.
I think a lot of people use the argument that companies shouldn’t police trademark sales on their auction sites because it’s difficult to “draw the line” between a real trademark and a bogus claim. The “draw the line” argument is a lazy excuse. There are some clear violations — like the two examples here — that I don’t think anyone would disagree with. In other cases, such as when Pool.com auctioned of Shoppers.com, they were right to let the auction go on. It was a silly trademark claim and the new buyer won the UDRP.
I should also point out that I don’t think we can ever stop people from violating trademarks. Just like stockbrokers — there are good ones, but they can’t stop people from doing illegal things. The key is that we must get the major enterprises to legitimize themselves. People look to GoDaddy as “the” domain registrar. When they see trademarks for sale on TDNAM, they assume it’s OK>
Ron is idiot to publicize such sales
Obvious trademark name sales should not be publicized. It encourages further trademark abuse and gives more fodder to CADNA. There is no upside to reporting them, so it should stop.
Hey, I think the more you guys cause companies to use WIPO, the more generics we see being WIPOED.
I suggest you guys think about that before you report another domain.
also the tm industry is also funding 90% of the “generic” sales.
Got your logic backwards dude. The more TM infringement period, the more generics get WIPO’d. Decrease the infringers by stinging them with WIPO defeats, they will learn the lesson that its too expensive, not worth the risk etc. Like the guys who just bought the high priced TM infringing names, should surprise no one when they get WIPO’d. Grab a broom or get out of the way.
jblack – I think 99% of the UDRPs are for people that got typos at reg fee or low cost. I think you’re right — need to do it on the expensive domains. If nothing else people won’t want to report them 🙂
Dear Shmackson, Ron is just transparent. Shows the market as it is.
By the way wwwmatch.com had a wipo in 2003 Match.com, L.P., v. Amjad Kausar
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2003/d2003-0510.html
Match.com got that domain but did not renew it.
Domisfera – thanks for the link. Companies need to dedicate someone to managing domains.
This gotta stop, trademark domains should not be listed by dnjournal since there are all kind of readers worldwide.