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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…

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

by — Domain Sales 10 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.

Steve Jobs gets his domain name, twenty years later

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

National Arbitration Forum orders SteveJobs.com to be transferred.

Logo for Apple ComputerThe Steve Jobs Archive, LLC, an organization formed by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs, has obtained the domain name SteveJobs.com through a dispute.

The company filed a cybersquatting complaint with National Arbitration Forum arguing that the South Korean registrant of SteveJobs.com was cybersquatting by owning the domain name. It was registered back in 1999.

The South Korean man argued he’d been going by the name Steve Jobs Kim since 1999. Indeed, the website archives show that the domain name has included that name on the website at times. But the panel viewed this as a ruse and ordered that the domain name be transferred.

A three-person National Arbitration Forum panel wrote:

The Panel finds that Internet users who are directed to the disputed domain name’s resolved website are likely to believe that they have successfully accessed a website related to, or authorized by, Steve Jobs or his successors. Once on the site, viewers are presented with the option to contact stevejobs.com.manager@gmail.com for consulting services as well as with links relaying technology news. Confusion as to whether the domain, website or its services are related to, or authorized by, Steve Jobs or his successors, likely causes engagement with the owner of the website and email account. The Panel agrees that such a use of the disputed domain name, to lure consumers and solicit business, constitutes bad faith use…

 

 

Non-Commercial users ask for three changes to .Org contract

by — Policy & Law 3 Comments

Constituency addresses pricing and censorship issues.

Logo for .org domain, featuring a blue circle with white letters spelling ORG

The Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) has sent a letter to ICANN, asking it to make three changes to the .org registry contract if it is to be sold to Ethos Capital.

The group points out that the contract to be the steward of .org was awarded to Internet Society (ISOC) based, in part, on ISOC’s reputation and goals. It was a competitive process.

Now, ISOC wants to sell it to a strictly for-profit private equity group.

(I find it perplexing that ICANN has shoehorned provisions of new top level domain contracts into legacy extensions without considering the history of these legacy extensions and how they were awarded to their current operators.)

NCSG wants to see three changes to the contract before it is transferred to Ethos:

  • A revised notification procedure in which wholesale price increases of any amount give ORG registrants 6 months to renew their domains for periods of up to 20 years at the pre-existing annual rate. Implementation of this revised notification procedure must be obligatory to both PIR as well as any registrar through which .org domain names are registered and/or renewed.
  • A strong commitment that the administration of the ORG domain will remain content-neutral; that is, the registry will not suspend or take away domains based on their publication of political, cultural, social, ethnic, religious, and personal content, even untrue, offensive, indecent, or unethical material, like that protected under the U.S. First Amendment.
  • An elimination of the URS procedure within the ORG domain, as the rights protection mechanisms specific to the URS were appropriate only for new domains.

While the price cap change requested in item #1 is helpful, it ignores two issues.

First, most .org registrants are unlikely to know the price is increasing until it comes time to renew. Therefore, they can’t lock in the original price for 20 years.

ISOC CEO Andrew Sullivan has noted that only a minority of .org users are speaking out against selling .org. That’s not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know about it. Likewise, they won’t know about price increases until it’s too late.

Second, it just kicks the can down the road another ten years.