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Do 3 letter domains have any real value?

by — Domain Sales 14 Comments

Is a domain name worth something if it’s just traded amongst investors with limited potential value to an end user?

Three letter .com domain names are very popular right now, with prices increasing significantly over the past year.

Much of the demand comes from domain traders in China. China itself is experiencing a bubble in tech stocks that rivals (or surpasses) the NASDAQ 15 years ago…perhaps including the ensuing bust.

Will the value of three letter .com domains face a similar fate to other assets that have rapidly increased in value? Or is there underlying value in these domain names that will cause them to continue to appreciate?

Let’s take a step back. Click here to continue reading…

NameDrive’s NDX Market Gears Up for Auction of 3 Character ccTLDs

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Domain marketplace gets ready for another three character auction.

Fresh on the heels of a three character .eu domain name auction in which all 771 domain names sold, NameDrive’s NDX Market is getting ready for a follow on auction.

Starting tomorrow, NDX Market will run an auction for 300 three character country code domain names. The domain names will be in these country codes: .AT, .BE, .CH, .CO.UK, .DE, .ES, .FR, .NL, .PL, .SE.

The auction will run until approximately 5 pm CET on August 17.

In order to participate, bidders must have both a NameDrive and NDX Market account. They also must register to be a certified buyer, which can take up to 48 hours. You can learn more about becoming certified at NDXMarket.com.

Prices for the domains will range from 30 EUR to 600 EUR.

MEC.com Hits $41,000 in Great Domains Auction

by — Domain Sales 5 Comments

Three character domain in the spotlight.

Sedo’s monthly Great Domains auction ends tomorrow, and a three character domain in the auction is attracting a lot of attention.

MEC.com is up to $41,000 with its reserve met. Four different bidders are in on the action. There are a number of companies and acronyms for MEC, and the domain name appears to get substantial traffic. It was just parked on March 18, and Sedo’s stats show over 3,000 visitors to the domain name since then.

Other three character domain names that have met their reserves include bsh.com and lmd.com.

Ski.ch — a Switzerland country code domain name — has met its reserve at 15,500 EUR with 22 bids.

Keep an eye on Software.de. At 50,000 EUR, it’s below its reserve range of 100,000-250,000 EUR, but I expect some action on this domain.

Here are a few lower priced domain names that may be worth bidding on:

Trusting.com – currently $950 with reserve met

Granted.com – reserve is under $1,000

Points.org – reserve met and only $161 so far.

German Lottery Provider Gets NKL.com Back 3 Years After Theft

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

Lottery wins domain name it says was stolen in 2006.

German state-owned lotto company NKL Nordwestdeutsche Klassenlotterie has won the transfer of the NKL.com domain name, three years after the domain name was allegedly stolen. NKL won the domain name through a WIPO proceeding.

In a strange series of events, it appears the domain name may have been stolen in 2006 but NKL didn’t realize this until 2009. The domain name was set to expire on October 10, 2006. In August 2006, the whois information suddenly changed and the domain was renewed. The whois ownership information then changed several times in the next three years, but the nameservers continued to point the domain name to NKL’s web site. For three years, NKL had no idea the domain name wasn’t under its control.

It wasn’t until the domain name pointed to another web site in 2009 that NKL says it became aware of the alleged theft. NKL alleged the owner of the domain name listed it for sale on expired domain name site NameJet. A look at historical whois records shows that it was likely added to NameJet because it expired on October 10, 2009.

The owner of the domain name didn’t respond to the complaint and the panel awarded the domain to NKL.

Gregory Ricks Loses LTI.com; Doesn’t Respond to Complaint

by — Policy & Law 10 Comments

Rewe Touristik Hotels & Investment GmbH picks up domain at arbitration.

Here’s an interesting UDRP in which the respondent didn’t file his response on a three character domain.

Domainer Gregory Ricks just lost the three character domain name LTI.com to a hotel company after failing to respond the the UDRP at World Intellectual Property Association (WIPO).

Something is certainly fishy here, since Ricks has gone out of his way to protect three character domain names at UDRP through strong responses and even lawsuits. When he lost an arbitration for BME.com, he quickly filed a lawsuit to block the transfer. I sent and email to Ricks asking for an explanation and will post it if he responds.

The complainant, which was awarded the domain name, is a member of the Rewe Group, a German retailing group. The Complainant (formally named LTI Hotelbeteiligungs- und Investitions gmbH) offers travel and hotel services under the name LTI International Hotels and its abbreviated form, LTI. The company operates at lti.de. LTI has been in business for almost twenty years.

LTI claimed that many of the pay-per-click links hosted on LTI.com were for travel services, which seems to be backed up by Archive.org.

Thanks Ramiro for the tip.