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Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Domain Name Industry News

Featured Domains

Trademark Holders Continue to Reclaim .Me Domain Names

by Andrew Allemann — February 16, 2009 Policy & Law 11 Comments

Sprite.me and Firefox.me go back to their rightful owners.

When .me launched to the general public last year, it was clear that a lot of people hadn’t heard of cybersquatting. Domain names like Porsche.me, Toyota.me, and Firefox.me were snapped up (and not my their familiar namesakes). Many of these domains were picked up at auction for a substantial amount of money.

Why did .me attract so many deep pocketed cybersquatters? I can only surmise that .me attracted a lot of people that didn’t know much about domain investing. They viewed .me as another internet goldrush, and thought the quickest way to riches was buying trademark domain names.

The owner of both Porsche.me and Toyota.me learned a lesson when he lost the domain name Porsche.me at arbitration in November. Could Toyota.me, and the $90,000 he spent on it, be next?

Brand holders continue to file UDRP complaints for popular trademarks in the .me country code. Mozilla won a case for Firefox.me and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) picked up Sprite.me. The registrant of both of these domain names was an outfit called Metro Media in Beverly Hills. When Mozilla Foundation contacted Metro Media about Firefox.me, Metro Media responded with an asking price of $10,000. As soon as Mozilla filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Association, Metro Media offered to transfer the domain at no cost. It also offered to transfer Sprite.me at no cost. That Metro Media tried to squeeze the non-profit Mozilla Foundation for $10,000 suggests that it was unfamiliar with cybersquatting laws and UDRP.

There are a few other .me domain names currently at arbitration, including Overstock.me. Guess who owns this domain? Yep, Metro Media.

But other registrants have also lost .me domain names, including danone.me, exxonmobil.me, and creditmutuel.me.

To be sure, not all arbitration cases are legitimate. Just see Ping.me.

The one big winner is the .me registry and its partners, such as GoDaddy. They get to keep the auction riches even when the domain is later lost at arbitration.

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11 Comments Tags: .me, udrp, wipo

.Me Domains Getting Developed…Slowly

by Andrew Allemann — January 8, 2009 Uncategorized 17 Comments

Some .me domain names now resolving to “real” web sites.

It’s one thing for a “new” domain extension to sell well when it launches (.eu, .mobi). The true test if a domain will retain long term value is if it is actually used and embraced on the web.

As you know, I’m not a fan of .me. Yeah, it’s a cute play on domains. But once ICANN releases new top level domains, .me will just be “another domain”. A country code domain at that. .You, anyone?

But to get an idea of what has happened to top .me domain names won during the auction launch (other than those lost at arbitration), you can visit Rewarding.me. The site has a “Dot Me Domain Status” tool that shows exactly how .me domains are being used.

A handful of the top .me domain names appear to have active web sites according to the tool. But most of them are merely glorified “under construction” pages, affiliate sites, or forwarded domains.

Clicking over to Insure.me shows an under construction page that says “Welcome to insure.me. The most anticipated insurance site on the internet.”

It had better be for the $68,005 Timothy Warbington plunked down for the site.

But there are a handful of truly active .me web sites listed on Rewarding.me. The site even lists the 346 .me web sites listed in the top 1,000,000 on Alexa. (Most of them are picture serving sites). Rewarding.me is certainly a useful tool. Has someone made a similar tool for .mobi so I don’t have to do it by hand?

So it looks like .me is gaining a small bit of momentum. .Me domainers just need to hope that Montenegro doesn’t go through political strife.

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17 Comments Tags: .me

Global Warming May Be Hazardous to Your Domain Names

by Andrew Allemann — November 18, 2008 Policy & Law 27 Comments

Country code domain names carry risks. Here are a couple examples.


Sure is pretty. Until the water rises.

This headline isn’t a joke. Here’s how global warming and subsequent rising ocean waters could doom a domain name extension.

Last night I read an article in The Economist about the Maldives, an island nation planning for the day it will be below sea level. The article also mentioned Tuvalu, an even smaller island nation of just over 10,000 inhabitants. At its highest, Tuvalu is just 5 meters above sea level. If waters rise, Tuvalu will become history. Its government is planning for that day, too.

Does Tuvalu sound familiar? Its country code domain name is .TV. .TV has since been commercialized by Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and promoted in a deal with DemandMedia. By handing over control of the domain to Verisign Tuvalu gets a nice cut of the profits.

If Tuvalu ceases to exist, current ICANN policy dictates that the .tv domain name will be phased out. Kim Davies, Manager of Root Zone Services for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, wrote in an email to Domain Name Wire:

The simple answer is if a country ceases to exist, under existing policy the domain will need to be retired. ICANN will permit a reasonable transition period so the affected parties can transition to other domains. In the most recent case, .YU (replaced with .RS and .ME), there was a 3 year transition period assigned by the ICANN Board.

To be sure, unless something catastrophic happens it will be long time before Tuvalu is completely under water even by Al Gore’s estimations.

A more likely scenario is that a country undergoes political strife, disbands, or renames. That’s how the repurposed .me domain name came to be, as referenced in Davies’ email. .Me is the country code for Montenegro, which was formerly part of Yugoslavia. The country code domain name for Yugoslavia, .yu, is being phased out.

In many parts of the world countries disappearing or changing names happens all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if ICANN was lobbied to change its policy of following the ISO 3166-1 standard for country codes if one of these “commercialized” ccTLDs such as .tv and .me was scheduled for extinction. But you should be aware of the risk.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

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27 Comments Tags: .me, .tv, country code domain names, iana

Porsche.me: Money Down the Drain

by Andrew Allemann — November 6, 2008 Policy & Law 33 Comments

Man who shelled out big bucks in .me auction kicking himself now.

Pity poor Georg Kohler of Brazil.

In August I wrote about how he snapped up car company names in the .me launch auctions. He even paid $90,025 for Toyota.me. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo from ten years ago about the dangers of owning trademarked domain names.

In a recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) decision, he lost Porsche.me to the car company. Could his $90,000 investment in Toyota.me be too far behind?

On both Porsche.me and Toyota.me, Kohler has landing pages that say the domain will be used for cars but in a non-commercial manner:

Welcome to our future non comercial [sic] Porsche Fan Club Site…Disclaimer: www.porsche.me is not owned by, sponsored by, authorized by, sanctioned by Porsche AG

The panel must not have bought it, or decided it didn’t care that it was non-commercial. Unfortunately WIPO hasn’t posted the decision online yet so we can’t read its rational. [update: the decision is now posted. The panel found that a) the fact that the domain is just the trademark – not trademarkfans.me or something like that – creates instant confusion and b) he offered to sell the domain to Porsche upon receiving a cease and desist letter.]

Kohler isn’t the only one to lose his .me domain names.

ExxonMobil recently picked up ExxonMobil.me from a Tampa, Florida man. Confederation Nationale du Credit Mutuel picked up CreditMutuel.me. It won’t be long before other trademarks get picked up in arbitration.

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33 Comments Tags: .me, udrp, wipo

.Me Domains to be Auctioned at TRAFFIC

by Andrew Allemann — September 3, 2008 Domain Sales 5 Comments

Marry.me, Kiss.me among domain names to be auctioned at this month’s TRAFFIC conference.

Following very strong results from its online auction of .me domain names, the .me registry will release the first set of withheld domains at this month’s TRAFFIC conference in Brooklyn. The registry withheld 2,500 catchy and generic domains to sell directly.

Among the domains to be auctioned include:

Love.Me
Buy.Me
Date.Me
Meet.Me
Ask.Me
Show.Me
Kiss.Me
Rent.Me
Watch.Me
Marry.Me
Loan.Me
Play.Me

The domains will be part of Moniker’s auction.

I have my doubts about .me and their value, which makes this auction all the more interesting and exciting. Will we continue to see five figure domain sales with .me? How will the big domainers respond?

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5 Comments Tags: .me

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