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Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

XYZ files three trademark applications

by Andrew Allemann — February 5, 2019 Uncategorized 0 Comments

New TLD company files for three trademarks on existing TLDs; readies two more namespaces.

Logo for .Monster top level domain name

XYZ.com is launching .Monster in sunrise this month.

New top level domain name company XYZ.com LLC filed three trademark applications last week that match the slogans it uses to market three top level domain names.

The applications are for:

  • Express your passion  (.theatre)
  • Advancing online security  (.security)
  • Claim your space  (.storage)

XYZ.com has 10 registered trademarks.

The company is getting ready to launch/relaunch two top level domain names this year: .Monster and .Baby. It acquired .Monster from jobs company Monster Worldwide and will launch it in sunrise this month. It acquired .baby from Johnson & Johnson.

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0 Comments Tags: .monster, .xyz, domain name, new tlds, xyz.com

XYZ files renewed motion for fees against Verisign

by Andrew Allemann — September 17, 2018 Policy & Law 0 Comments

District Court will reconsider request for Verisign to pay legal fees stemming from lawsuit.

After winning its second Appeals Court case against Verisign, top level domain name registry .XYZ is renewing its request (pdf) for Verisign to pay attorney fees.

Here’s the background:

Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) sued XYZ for false advertising. A federal district court granted summary judgment in XYZ’s favor, and XYZ asked the court to award it legal fees of over $1 million. Verisign then appealed the original case and lost the appeal. The federal district court then ruled against awarding legal fees (beyond about $57,000 related to discovery.)

XYZ appealed the attorney fees decision. In May, the Appeals Court agreed with XYZ that the lower court did not consider the motion for fees correctly. It wrote:

…we hold that a prevailing party need only prove an exceptional case by a preponderance of the evidence, rather than by clear and convincing evidence, as the district court below required. We further clarify that a prevailing party need not establish that the losing party acted in bad faith in order to prove an exceptional case.

That sent the case back to the lower court to apply the correct standard to XYZ’s motion for fees. On Saturday, XYZ filed its post-remand submission in support of its motion for fees.

XYZ gives a long list of reasons the case should be considered exceptional, including Verisign’s broad discovery requests, 25 depositions and 17 third-party subpoenas. XYZ wrote:

Why would a sophisticated company with competent legal counsel file such a flimsy case? XYZ said nothing about .com that hadn’t been said before, and Verisign’s own numbers showed .com registrations continued to grow even after XYZ’s statements. Why draw further attention to those statements by filing a lawsuit over them? Why drag that suit on as the odds of victory grew ever longer, all the while refusing to ever meaningfully discuss settlement? The reasonable inference is that Verisign’s primary motive wasn’t winning the lawsuit so much as sending a message, not only to XYZ but to all of the other new top-level domains that entered the market and presented Verisign with meaningful competition for the first time in decades.

The circumstantial evidence supports an inference that Verisign’s true motive in pursuing a claim this weak, this aggressively, was to drain XYZ’s resources, intimidate its principal, and send a message to its other new competitors. [redacted] Under these circumstances, fee-shifting is warranted to both deter such conduct going forward and to compensate XYZ for enduring, defending and defeating Verisign’s tenuous claims and faulty lawsuit.

XYZ spent over $1 million defending itself in the lawsuit.

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XYZ asks court to make Verisign lawsuit documents public

by Andrew Allemann — September 4, 2018 Policy & Law 3 Comments

Company that runs .xyz domain wants to make documents from legal battle public.

XYZ wants to make documents from long battle with Verisign pubic.

XYZ.com, LLC, the company that operates the .xyz top level domain name, has asked a court (pdf) to let it make certain documents from a lawsuit with Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) public.

Verisign, the registry that operates the .com and .net top level domains, sued the .xyz operator in early 2015 alleging false advertising. Basically, Verisign said XYZ inflated its success and disparaged Verisign’s domains.

After extensive discovery, a judge tossed out Verisign’s suit on summary judgment. XYZ then asked the court to require Verisign to pay its $1.6 million legal bill, but that was put on hold as Verisign appealed the lower court’s ruling to an appeals court. Click here to continue reading…

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3 Comments Tags: .xyz, lawsuits, topstory, VeriSign

CentralNic reports 2017 earnings, merger with KeyDrive still in the works

by Andrew Allemann — May 31, 2018 Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Company reports revenue increase in 2017 and hopes to merge with KeyDrive in Q3.

Domain name company CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) published its 2017 annual report (pdf) today.

Topline revenue increased from £22.1m in 2016 to £24.3m in 2017. Profit after tax was basically flat at £1.0, but the company’s Adjusted EBITA measure grew from £5.5m to £6.6m.

CentralNic divides its business into three groups:

Retail – domain name registrars such as Instra and Internet.bs
Wholesale – registry services, such as managing the back end for .xyz
Enterprise – mostly premium domain name sales, but also corporate domain management and dot-brands

Revenue grew in the retail and wholesale divisions but slipped in enterprise. CentralNic has been on a premium domain hamster wheel that the company admits is running out of energy.

On the wholesale side, revenue growth came mostly from .xyz and Radix’s top level domains.

The company renegotiated its contract to run .xyz. It extended the contract until 2032 and structured it as a flat-fee agreement, with some increases possible based on volume.

CentralNic completed its acquisition of Slovakia’s .sk country code by buying SK-NIC on December 5, 2017. This contributed £0.3m of revenue for the 26 final days of the year. That business has nice margins; the adjusted EBITA margin was 79% for that period.

The company said merger discussions with KeyDrive are continuing and it hopes to complete the combination in Q3 of this year.

It also said it plans to offer online security and brand protection services to its corporate clients.

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0 Comments Tags: .sk, .xyz, centralnic, instra, keydrive, topstory

.XYZ gets another win against Verisign

by Andrew Allemann — May 29, 2018 Policy & Law 2 Comments

Appeals court decision gives XYZ another chance to be awarded legal fees.

It’s been over three years since Verisign (NYSE: VRSN) sued XYZ, the seller of .xyz domain names, for false advertising.

The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of XYZ in November 2015 but that wasn’t the end of it. XYZ asked the court to award attorney’s fees, at which point Verisign appealed the summary judgment decision to the Court of Appeals.

XYZ prevailed again in the appeal, which meant that the lower court could then consider XYZ’s request for attorney’s fees. The lower court found that the case did not qualify as exceptional and denied XYZ’s request for Verisign to pay its growing legal bills.

Then it was XYZ’s turn to appeal. It argued that the District Court applied the wrong standard–“clear and convincing evidence” instead of “a preponderance of evidence”– when considering the legal fees.

The Court of Appeal just found (pdf) in XYZ’s favor. It has remanded the case to District Court, agreeing that the lower court applied the wrong standard in its decision. It also clarified that XYZ does not need to show that Verisign acted in bad faith to prove an exceptional case worthy of legal reimbursement.

As with the original lawsuit, the stakes are higher for XYZ and Verisign. The millions in legal fees XYZ has accrued are a big deal to it and just a rounding error to Verisign.

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2 Comments Tags: .xyz, domain names, false advertising, VeriSign, vrsn

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