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Sue the right person

by — Expired Domains 6 Comments

This person sued the wrong entity to recover his domain name. It’s a shame.

A screenshot of ScottRigsbyFoundation.org showing its use for online gambling

Scott Rigsby is right to be upset about how his former domain is being used. But he sued the wrong entity.

In August 2019, I wrote about an unfortunate expired domain name case involving Scott Rigsby.

Rigsby suffered a horrific car accident as a young man. He was dragged hundreds of feet from a pickup. He spent the next 12 years under medical care and underwent 26 surgeries.

He created the Scott Rigsby Foundation, Inc. and set up a website at ScottRigsbyFoundation .org, registered at GoDaddy.

The domain name expired. The person who acquired the domain set up a site that looks similar to the Foundation’s site, but it promotes gambling.

Rigsby blamed GoDaddy for the expiration and subsequently auctioning the domain through its expired domain platform.

It’s an unfortunate use of the domain name. It’s also unfortunate that Rigsby decided to sue GoDaddy over the matter rather than the person who acquired the domain name.

After a couple of years in the courts, the judge dismissed Rigsby’s third amended complaint. Rigsby is appealing.

It strikes me that this could have been settled a couple of years ago for a lot less money. If the goal is just to get the domain back, I think Rigsby would have prevailed with a simple UDRP filing. Barring that, he should have sued the domain registrant.

Instead, Rigsby is trying to convince a judge that GoDaddy is culpable for things like ACPA, which is just not going to happen.

 

Walmart.com, Ford.com and other big company domains expire soon

by — Expired Domains 5 Comments

GoldmanSachs.com expires later this month!

Picture of an hour glass with the words "time's (almost) up"

OK, I get it. Fortune 500 companies use reputable brand management domain registrars that are good at auto-renewing domain names.

Still, if you’re Comcast, does it make sense that your domain name expires in just a couple of months? If you’re a big banking institution like Goldman Sachs, why are you waiting until days before your domain name is due to expire to renew it? If you’re Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, does it make sense that a core piece of your infrastructure is due to go offline in under three months?

Here are 6 Fortune 500 companies with domain names expiring in the new four months.

GoldmanSachs.com – July 24

Comcast.com – August 28

Ford.com – August 31

Walmart.com – September 23

Humana.com – September 25

Chase.com – October 9

Why this weird domain sold for $6500 with 333 bids

by — Expired Domains 0 Comments

There might be a connection to China…or just the backlinks.

A question mark on a chalkboard

I am still puzzled by the domain SJZHDC .com selling in a Godaddy auction recently for $6,500.

Generally speaking, six letters are too long to act as an acronym and don’t carry much value. However, SJZHDC .com appears to be an exception. It surprisingly attracted 333 bids in the auction. So, what is the mystery behind this domain?

Wayback Machine is my Sherlock Holmes that can tell me the past life of a domain. According to it, SJZHDC .com was first registered in 2011 but not used. Later, it was dropped but picked up again in 2013 and developed into a website called Zhou Gong Jie Mong (周公解夢), which operated until January this year. Because the website’s language is traditional (not simplified) Chinese, it was probably meant for use outside mainland China — such as Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Zhou Gong Jie Mong (周公解梦) literally means “Zhou Gong Interpretation of Dreams”. Zhou Gong, the Duke of Zhou, was a member of the royal family of the Zhou Dynasty (1050 to 771 BC). He is also known as the “God of Dreams” for his exceptional ability to interpret dreams. Legend has it that he wrote the book “The Interpretation of Dreams by the Duke of Zhou” which is still used today to interpret dreams.

On the SJZHDC .com site, you can enter keywords about your dream or simply select a specific one from the large collection of dreams to look for interpretation.

The contents of SJZHDC .com are useful, but the website’s title (brand) does not match the name of the domain. The correct one should have been ZGJM .com (which is currently parked). A good example can be found in ZGJM .org, which is both brand-matching and filled with content very similar to SJZHDC .com.

For comparison, SJZHDC .cn was registered only in March this year and has a landing page that may be related to the Galaxy Macau hotel in Macau. SJZHDC .com.cn is still available for registration.

I did a Baidu search on the term “SJZHDC” and my impression is that SJZ is associated with Shi Jia Zhuang (石家庄), a city and capital of the Hebei Province, and HDC with High Definition Console games. However, no other evidence has been found to confirm the meaning of “SJZHDC”.

After all these efforts, what have I found? Not much, except that SJZHDC .com has 13 million backlinks according to ahrefs.com. Maybe the new owner paid 4 figures for the backlinks of the domain.

Taking an expired domain cleanse

by — Expired Domains 4 Comments

Consider taking a break from the daily grind of buying expired domains.

Picture of clock with words "expired domains"

Cleanses and fasting are all the rage in the health world. You might consider doing a cleanse in expired domain purchasing, too.

Over the past month or so I’ve taken a break from buying expired domains. Here are some benefits to taking an expired domain cleanse:

– I save hours each week searching for expired domains.

– I don’t have to be glued to my phone throughout the day to bid on domains. It’s amazing how much time this takes. Worse, it’s a huge distraction from other tasks. As a bonus, I don’t cuss out the SnapNames for not alerting me to being outbid in the app and sending late outbid notices.

– It helps me clear out my backorders on SnapNames/NameJet. These sit around forever and can trigger backorders if a domain expires a second time. By taking a break, I can delete all existing backorders without worrying about accidentally deleting recent backorders I added that haven’t gone through the auction yet.

– When I get back to buying expired domains, I’ll be able to take a fresh look at the metrics I use and consider if there’s a better approach.

– It boosts cash flow because I continue to sell while I’m not buying. (In the long run, if you don’t replenish your inventory, you can expect your sell-through rate to decrease.)

I’ve still acquired domains over this period, including some on Sedo where I don’t need to worry about the domain closing at a certain time.

It’s been a nice cleanse, but I’ll return to buying soon.

Buying an expiring domain? Might want to check this

by — Expired Domains 3 Comments

The domain could already be subject to a UDRP.

logo for Solverde Casinos with a green background and image of a sun

A domain investor bought an expired domain that Solverde had already filed a UDRP against. The casino company won, and the domain buyer is suing to retain the domain.

Domain investors review a lot of data before buying expiring domain names. The more expensive the domain, the more data they check.

Sometimes I’ll Google the domain name to see how it’s used. I might even check a trademark database if the name seems like it might be a trademark. What I’ve never thought to do is see if the domain is subject to a current UDRP case.

After all, if a company decided to file a UDRP against a domain that was about to expire, wouldn’t they at least work with the registrar to make sure the renewal fee was paid?

Apparently not.

Turn Invest Group Ltd. bought SolVerde.com for $665 on NameJet in January after it expired. But the domain was already subject to a UDRP filed in November 2020. Despite being notified by the registrar of the pending expiration, neither World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the Complainant, casino company Solverde, S.A., apparently did anything about it.

So the domain expired and Turn Invest Group won a competitive auction.

According to the WIPO panel, the domain buyer should have searched to see if there was an active UDRP:

…The Respondent is a sophisticated domain name investor, and has been in this business since 2009.

Despite providing a detailed declaration, the Respondent did not provide any details of searches or due diligence the Respondent undertook prior to acquiring the disputed domain name at auction. A Google search of “SOLVERDE” conducted by the Panel resulted in many search results for the Complainant on the first page of the search results. Moreover, if the Respondent had searched the UDRP SEARCH database at “www.udrpsearch.com”, the Respondent would have seen that the disputed domain name was subject to an “active case”…

OK, I can buy searching Google to see if these two Spanish dictionary words are a well-known trademark used exclusively by one company. But checking for a UDRP?

The panel found in favor of Solverde, S.A.. Now, Turn Invest Group is suing to block the transfer.

The company filed a lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court in Florida yesterday. It’s asking the court for declaratory relief that ownership of the domain is not infringing on Solverde S.A.’s trademarks and a finding of reverse domain name hijacking.

Howard Neu is local counsel for the plaintiff.

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