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Donuts acquires .Fan after original owner fails

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Donuts, one of the original applicants for .fan, acquires it from failing registry.

The owner of .fan and .fans has failed, and Donuts was more than happy to pick up .fan–a domain name it originally applied for.

Donuts announced today that it has “re-acquired” the .fan top level domain name. Why the “re-acquired” language? Well, Donuts was one of two original applicants for the domain name. It entered into a private settlement with Asiamix Digital in which Asiamix won the contention set.

Now, many years later, Donuts has acquired the domain name. Think about what happened here: Donuts got paid to leave the original contention set, and now it has acquired .fan, most likely for much, much less than the original contention set was settled for. Not bad.

.Fan is Donut’s 241st top level domain under management.

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Canadian company GVE Global Vision Inc tries reverse domain name hijacking

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Package proofreading firm guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

A Canadian company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name GlobalVision.com.

GVE Global Vision Inc (which goes by the name GlobalVision) helps companies like P&G and Coca-Cola with proofreading and inspecting their packaging.

It filed a complaint under UDRP with National Arbitration Forum, arguing that the UK company SDB Organisation Limited was cybersquatting with the domain name.

SDB registered the domain name in 1995, about 23 years ago. This is before GVE Global Vision had any rights in the Global Vision name. The complainant registered GlobalVisionInc.com in 1997.

GVE Global Vision tried to buy the domain from its owner in 2016. When that failed, it filed a trademark in Canada for Global Vision. Then it filed the cybersquatting complaint after getting the Canadian trademark.

Panelist Darryl C. Wilson wrote:

Respondent asserts Complainant and Respondent’s companies co-existed for 21 years without issue until 2016, when Complainant made an attempt to purchase the disputed domain name from Respondent, which Respondent refused on the grounds Respondent is an active company. Respondent asserts Complainant subsequently registered a trademark and engaged a legal team to intimidate Respondent by filing the Complaint to illegitimately gain control over the domain. The Panel here finds that Complainant knew or should have known that it was unable to prove that Respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in the globalvision.com domain name and that Respondent registered and is using the disputed domain name in bad faith. The Panel thus concludes that reverse domain name hijacking has occurred.

GVE Global Vision was represented by Legal Logik Inc.

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Namecheap starts sending expired domains to GoDaddy Auctions

by — Expired Domains 2 Comments

GoDaddy Auctions increases its expired domain footprint.

Namecheap is the latest domain name registrar to send its expired domain name inventory to GoDaddy Auctions.

A Domain Name Wire reader noticed a domain in the GoDaddy Auctions expiry stream today that is for a domain registered at Namecheap. I subsequently ran searches uncovering many more.

Namecheap joins Tucows and Endurance International Group, which have been sending their domains to GoDaddy for a while. This means that GoDaddy Auctions has the expired domain inventory from the #1, #2, #3, and #6 largest domain registration companies (based on their .com registration base).

I predicted that Namecheap would end up in GoDaddy’s stable. Namecheap just had a nasty divorce with Tucows, which operates the competing website NameJet where Namecheap names were previously auctioned off.

(Yes, Tucows sends its expired domain inventory to GoDaddy despite owning 50% of a competing expired domain service. That speaks volumes.)

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Man gets 20 years in prison for trying to steal a domain name

by — Policy & Law 9 Comments

Man tried physically force domain owner to transfer the domain name.

A Cedar Rapids, Iowa man will head to prison for 20 years for trying to steal a domain name, the Associated Press reports.

By steal a domain name, I mean physically.

Sherman Hopkins Jr. broke into a man’s home on June 21, 2017 with a handgun and demanded that the resident transfer the domain name DoItForState.com to another account, the AP reports. He shot the man with the gun and used a stun gun, but then the man got control of the gun and shot Hopkins back.

Domain name theft happens all of the time, but rarely does it involve a physical altercation. Usually, it’s a matter of stealing someone’s domain name registrar credentials or hacking into their email.

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Comparing Whois after GDPR

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

See a limited Whois record through Port 43 as well as GoDaddy’s full Whois records.

Earlier today ICANN continued its battle in German courts over what data domain name registrars need to collect for WHOIS now that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation is in effect.

Because of GDPR, ICANN has changed the data that domain name registrars must display in Whois records.

In this video, you’ll see what information domain name registrars need to provide for Port 43 lookups. It also shows what GoDaddy is providing if you do a web-based lookup on GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy continues to provide full Whois records for web-based lookups. Most other registrars limit the data.

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