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The (original) Boring Company sues Elon Musk’s company for trademark infringement

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

A Nevada company says it is receiving invoices and collection notices meant for Elon Musk’s tunnel-building company.

Screenshot of TheBoringCompany.com

Not Elon Musk’s company.

Let’s say you’re a company in Las Vegas that does boring, trenching, and other underground drilling. You’re called The Boring Company. You use the domain name TheBoringCompany.com to promote your services.

Then Elon Musk, the richest person in the world (on paper), decides to create an underground tunnel system and calls his company The Boring Company. At first, he starts tunneling in California. But then he signs a deal to drill a tunnel underneath Las Vegas.

Think that might cause confusion?

According to the original The Boring company, it certainly has.

In a trademark infringement lawsuit (pdf) filed yesterday, Nevada-based The Boring Company says it has “received numerous invoices, past due statements, collection notices, and notices of intent to file liens in an amount exceeding $100,000.00—none of which belong to Plaintiff but have mistakenly been sent to and/or named Plaintiff instead of Defendant.”

Ouch.

The Nevada company is suing Elon Musk’s company for trademark infringement and a host of other claims. It says it has been in negotiations with the company for a while, but has been unable to resolve the issue.

Direct visits drive demand for domains in China

by — Uncategorized 6 Comments

Data from Baidu shows how people in China visit websites.

Is domain important when Chinese consumers visit a website? What are the implications in terms of demand for domains and types of domains that can sell to people and companies in China? As a domain investor, these are the questions I want to get answers to.

I have been analyzing website visit data since 2019. Previous results can be found here: 2019 and 2020. They were based on the Baidu web traffic data that you can find here (in Chinese).

Baidu made two changes in 2019. First, the company stopped releasing yearly figures. I solved the problem by averaging the monthly numbers of a year to give us the data we need. This assumes the same traffic each month, but the numbers are roughly the same from month-to-month. You can see the monthly numbers for 2020 below.

2020DirectVisitReferalSearchEngineInsiteVisit
Jan68.8615.9414.151.05
Feb6817.3813.680.94
Mar66.4318.414.011.16
Apr65.9518.9113.931.21
May66.9118.4913.451.15
Jun65.7118.9514.151.19
Jul65.6118.2415.151
Aug65.9917.2116.30.5
Sep66.9318.4714.440.16
Oct67.2819.0213.70
Nov66.3720.2713.360
Dec67.4818.8713.650
Average66.7918.3614.160.70

In the same year, Baidu removed the “Directory” and “Social Media” categories. Instead, it added “Insite Visit” which is translated from 站内来源 (Zhan Nei Lai Yuan) because I could not find the corresponding term in English. “Insite Visit” measures visitors who become active again after being idle for more than 30 minutes. (If the term is too technical to understand, you are not alone. Because its share is tiny, we can ignore the category.) Below are the yearly numbers.

PeriodDirectReferralSearchDirectorySocialInsite
20120.39360.27740.27340.04880.0068--
20130.34790.32960.24930.05720.0161--
20140.39830.33790.19860.04590.0193--
20150.40830.29960.23390.030.0282--
20160.41950.29380.25660.020.0101--
20170.41390.28880.28440.00960.0033--
20180.44570.24460.30010.00630.0033--
20190.67380.14650.1664----0.0133
20200.66790.18350.1416----0.007

When you look at the numbers, one thing stands out: Over 65% of consumers visit a site directly. In other words, they must remember the domain and then use it to arrive at the site.

Here are two takeaways: (1) Domains are very important, so corporate demand for them is solid and will grow as China expands its economy and global reach. (2) Short, easy-to-remember domains will continue to be sought after by Chinese companies. Specifically, that means mostly .com or .cn domains because they are familiar to Chinese consumers.

Clubhouse app driving surge in .Club registrations

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

.Club is on a tear thanks to the Clubhouse app.

Screenshot of clubhouse app showing clubs on the left and the history club on the right.

The Clubhouse app is driving a surge in .club registrations. On the left, a screenshot of groups in the app called clubs. On the right, the History Club uses a .club domain name.

If you follow .Club founder Colin Campbell on twitter, you know he’s been excited the past couple of weeks. .Club has been on a tear. Here’s one of his tweets:

And that’s just one day. Other tweets show that hundreds of premium .club domains have been registered every day recently.

From January 1-17, premium .club registrations are up 737% compared to the same time last year. Regular registrations are up 92%.

Some of the premium registrations are fairly inexpensive (about $20), but others are pricey.

So what’s driving this sudden surge? It seems to be the popular Clubhouse app.

You might have heard of Clubhouse described as an app that’s kind of like podcasting. It’s a social media platform focused on the spoken word. I think a better description is communal radio because it’s not recorded like a podcast is.

On Clubhouse, you can follow people or groups called clubs (see top left image).

The nomenclature seems to be driving people to register .club domains related to their clubs. The top right image shows the History Club on Clubhouse. It uses and promotes the domain historyclub.club.

Additionally, domain investment discussions on the platform are driving new interest in domain investing. Clubhouse users who learn about or discuss domain investing on the platform are interested in .club domains given the popularity of the app.

Clubhouse will likely get much more popular as the year progresses. Its success is remarkable given that it’s only available on iOS so far and is invite-only.

It will be interesting to see if this surge in .club registrations continues along with the app’s popularity.

Namecheap tops $200 million revenue in 2020

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

Company hits big revenue milestone during its 20th year in business.

Picture of stock chart with the words earnings report

Privately held domain name registrar and hosting company Namecheap has revealed to Domain Name Wire that it topped $200 million in revenue last year. The milestone comes during the company’s 20th year in business.

Revenue was up 35%, or $51.6 million, over the $149 million it posted in 2019. Its growth rate in 2019 was 19%.

Namecheap picked up 1.1 million new customers, a 63% increase over the prior years’ growth rate.

The company finished the year with 12.6 million domains under management, up 2.24 million for the year.

The pandemic led to a surge in businesses moving their businesses online. Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall said he doesn’t see that trend slowing down.

“Looking forward to the year ahead, we believe that the shift to online by many businesses affected by the pandemic will continue to provide for steady growth,” Kirkendall said. “Our industry best support stands ready to continue to help our new customers get online as quickly and seamlessly as possible via our fast-evolving product range.”

Vaccine companies as examples of Chinese domain usage

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

Kassey Lee examines the domains that these Chinese vaccine companies use as a proxy for Chinese corporate domain choices.

Image of a person getting a vaccine in their right arm.

When I read news about Chinese Covid-19 vaccines these days, I see international diplomacy in play. If I put on my domain lenses, however, I see a different picture which helps me understand what to invest in for the China domain market.

Undoubtedly, there is a frenzy for Covid-19 vaccines across the world, and China is busy taking orders from Mexico, Chile, Ukraine, Turkey, Indonesia, Philippines, and many other countries. Even Brazil has changed its anti-China stance and ordered 100 million doses of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines recently.

A few weeks ago, South China Morning Post published an article on the Covid-19 vaccine race and listed the key players involved in it. With the help of Baidu search, I have found the domains used by these companies, as shown below.

English Chinese Domain Upgrade
Sinovac 科兴 Sinovac.com –
Cansino 康希诺 CansinoTech.com Cansino.com
Sinopharm 国药 Sinopharm.com –
Zhifei 智飞 ZhiFeiShengWu.com ZhiFei.com
Biokangtai 康泰 Biokangtai.com –
Fosun Pharma 复星 FosunPharma.com Fosun.com
Walvax 沃森 Walvax.com –
Junshi 君实 JunshiPharma.com Junshi.com
I-Mab 天境 i-MabBiopharma.com i-Mab.com
Haier Biomedical 海尔生物 HaierBiomedical.com HaierBio.com
Aucma 澳柯玛 Aucma.com –

What can we learn from this exercise? First, focus on .com domains if you want to sell to China. All of the companies on the list own .com domains. More importantly, these .com domains are actually used inside China and trusted by Chinese consumers.

Second, most of the domains are brand-matching. For example, Jack Ma’s company is called Alibaba Group Holding, but most people remember it as “Alibaba”. Therefore, its brand is “Alibaba” and so the brand-matching domain is Alibaba.com but not AlibabaGroup.com or AlibabaGroupHolding.com. Of course, the acronym version is also acceptable. Therefore, if you own a domain that matches the brand of a company, your domain is very valuable.

Cansino is an interesting case. The company’s website actually promotes the “CansinoBio” as its brand but many news articles I checked use “Cansino” instead. Therefore, “Cansino” has become a brand by public usage. For this reason, it is important for the company to own Cansino.com. Currently, Cansino.com is a small website dedicated to the Cansino family, so its acquisition may be possible.

Many of the domains are English-based domains. Note that I’m using the term “English” loosely to refer to domains that “look” western. Examples are Walvax.com, i-Mab.com, and Aucma.com. That’s good news to investors who do not invest in Pinyin domains. You still have a chance to sell to China even if you only have English-based domains.

The list also shows that many Chinese companies can benefit from domain upgrades. Examples are Cansino.com, ZhiFei.com, and Junshi.com. The case of Fosun.com also shows how important it is to use the best domain from day one. The domain is currently owned by Fosun International (a large consumer group listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange), so it is unlikely Fosun.com will ever be sold.

 

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