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Namecheap revenue continues its surge in Q2

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Year-over-year revenue grows 38% in Q2.

Picture of stock chart with the words earnings report

Domain name registrar Namecheap generated $49 million in revenue during Q2 2020, the company reported to Domain Name Wire. That’s up almost 38% over the same period last year and up 7.6% quarter-over-quarter. First-half revenue was $94.8 million, up $22.1 million, or 30%, over H1 2019.

The company had a net increase of 565,000 domains under management and now has 11.3 million DUMs.

Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall said he anticipates that the company will surpass 12 million domains under management in Q4 of this year.

During the second quarter, Namecheap added over 308,000 new customers, a 93% increase over the same period last year. Year-to-date, Namecheap has added 528,000 new customers, up 58% from the same period last year.

“In these uncertain times, we are proud to be able to continue to operate at full capacity, offering our industry leading 24/7 customer support, while being able to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our entire workforce, who all continue working from home,” said Kirkendall.

Intuit missed TurboTaxSucksAss.com

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Companies can’t register all domains that can be used to attack them.

Screenshot of TurboTaxSucksAss.com

Patriot Act’s website calls attention to tax prep software company efforts to hide their free options.

Last year, Intuit registered lots of domain names defensively as reports surfaced about its nefarious tactics with TurboTax. It had lobbied the government not to make its own tax filing software by offering to provide a free option. Then it hid its free option, including blocking it from being indexed by Google.

Intuit registered domains like f*ckintuit.com, turbotaxscam.com, and intuitexposed.com to prevent people from using the domains to attack it.

I’ve long argued that these defensive registration exercises are futile. The choices are endless if someone wants to register a derogatory term with a brand in it. Here’s a case in point: Intuit missed TurboTaxSucksAss.com.

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj created a website using the domain. It calls attention to the free file options that tax prep companies try to hide.

You can watch the episode covering TurboTax below.

Here are the domains Amazon registered for the Seattle arena

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

Amazon registered over 75 domains for the arena it’s calling Climate Pledge Arena.

Mockup for center ice at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle

Photo courtesy Amazon.

I can’t wait to watch a live hockey game again. It certainly won’t be until next year, and it’s likely to be in Seattle’s completely refurbished arena.

Last week, Amazon announced that it bought naming rights to the arena where Seattle’s NHL team will begin play in 2021. Instead of calling it the Amazon Arena, it named it the Climate Pledge Arena.

Some might call it greenwashing, but the name will certainly keep Amazon under the microscope when it comes to its environmental impact.

Amazon.com registered over 75 domain names in conjunction with the naming. Most of these are for defensive purposes. The list is below:

amazon-cparena.com
amazonarena.net
amazonarena.org
amazonautonomouscars.com
amazonbasketballarena.com
amazonbasketballcourt.com
amazoncarbonzeorarena.com
amazoncarbonzero.com
amazonclimatearena.com
amazonclimatepledgearena.com
amazoncparena.com
amazonhockeyarena.com
amazonhockeyrink.com
amazonridehailing.com
amazonridehailingvehicles.com
amazonrink.com
amazonsclimatearena.com
amazonsclimatepledgearena.com
amazonseattlesportsarena.com
amazonsportsarena.com
amazonzerocarbon.com
amazonzerocarbonarena.com
aws-arena.com
awssportsarena.com
climatepledgearena.net
climatepledgearena.org
climatepledgebasketballcourt.com
climatepledgebasketeballarena.com
climatepledgecarbonzeroarena.com
climatepledgecourt.com
climatepledgehockeyarena.com
climatepledgehockeyrink.com
climatepledgerink.com
climatepledgesportsarena.com
climatepledgestadium.com
climatepledgezerocarbonarena.com
codingtoolkit.com
countdown-to-carbonzero.com
countdown-to-netzero.com
countdowntocarbonzero.com
countdowntonetzero.com
cp-arena.com
cparena.com
join-lead-change.com
joinleadchange.com
seattle-cparena.com
seattleclimatepledgearena.com
seattlecparena.com
the-amazon-arena.com
the-aws-arena.com
theamazonarena.net
theamazonarena.org
theamazonbasketballarena.com
theamazonbasketballcourt.com
theamazonclimatepledgearena.com
theamazoncourt.com
theamazonhockeyarena.com
theamazonhockeyrink.com
theamazonrink.com
theamazonsportsarena.com
theawsarena.com
theawsportsarena.com
theclimatepledgearena.net
theclimatepledgearena.org
theclimatepledgebasketballarena.com
theclimatepledgebasketballcourt.com
theclimatepledgecourt.com
theclimatepledgehockeyarena.com
theclimatepledgehockeyrink.com
theclimatepledgerink.com
theclimatepledgesportsarena.com
theclimatepledgestadium.com
theseattleclimatepledgearena.com
climatepledgearena.us
theamazonarena.us
theclimatepledgearena.us

 

State Farm tries (again) to get a State Farm Bowl domain

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

The insurance giant really wants this domain name.

Logo for State Farm

Earlier this year, insurance giant State Farm lost a UDRP for the domain name TheStateFarmBowl .com.

The owner of the domain argued that he bought it to sell wooden bowls in the outline of states. Get it? State ‘farm bowls’? (His plans seem to have been delayed because he still hasn’t developed the site.)

This loss came on the heels of losing a similar case for the domain BigStateFarmAgent .com because it could be read is ‘big state’ ‘farm agent’.

State Farm was miffed at losing the seemingly football-themed TheStateFarmBowl .com domain to go along with its defensively-registered StateFarmBowl.com. So it filed a second time with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain.

There are limited cases in which a company can file a UDRP a second time. According to the WIPO Jurisprudential Overview 3.0:

Panels have accepted refiled complaints only in highly limited circumstances such as (i) when the complainant establishes that legally relevant developments have occurred since the original UDRP decision, (ii) a breach of natural justice or of due process has objectively occurred, (iii) where serious misconduct in the original case (such as perjured evidence) that influenced the outcome is subsequently identified, (iv) where new material evidence that was reasonably unavailable to the complainant during the original case is presented, or (v) where the case has previously been decided (including termination orders) expressly on a “without prejudice” basis.

For example, had the owner of the domain started selling insurance, then State Farm might have a legitimate reason to refile. But none of the exceptional circumstances applied here, so the panelist declined to render a new decision.

Supreme Court: Booking.com can get its trademark

by — Policy & Law 21 Comments

Court rules that Booking.com can be trademarked.

Screenshot of header of Supreme Court decision for Booking.com trademark

The Supreme Court of the United States issues its ruling about a trademark for Booking.com.

In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled today that Booking.com can trademark Booking.com.

For background on the issue, listen to DNW Podcast #285.

Booking.com sought the trademark, only to be rebuffed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which argued that it’s generic. The USPTO argues that adding .com to a generic term—like adding “Company”—can convey no source-identifying meaning.

The Supreme Court disagreed, writing:

That premise is faulty, for only one entity can occupy a particular Internet domain name at a time, so a “generic.com” term could convey to consumers an association with a particular website.

Furthermore:

Under these principles, whether “Booking.com” is generic turns on whether that term, taken as a whole, signifies to consumers the class of online hotel-reservation services. Thus, if “Booking.com” were generic, we might expect consumers to understand Travelocity—another such service—to be a “Booking.com.” We might similarly expect that a consumer, searching for a trusted source of online hotel-reservation services, could ask a frequent traveler to name her favorite “Booking.com” provider.

So under limited circumstances, companies can trademark a generic term + .com (or perhaps another top level domain).

But that trademark won’t grant the company protection of the generic term of the second-level domain. Booking.com acknowledged that the Booking.com mark would be weak. It will also not allow it successfully go after anyone who uses the generic term ‘booking’ in their mark.

The court wrote:

Guarding against the anticompetitive effects the PTO identifies, several doctrines ensure that registration of “Booking.com” would not yield its holder a monopoly on the term “booking.”

In fact, Booking.com said it would not go after companies such as ebooking.com, or others that use the term in their name or domain name. It seems that the protection this trademark will provide is against someone, say, promoting themselves as booking.com on their website or naming their hotel Booking.com.

The full decision is here (pdf).



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