Penn State which certainly has had one of the biggest scandals in the United States over the last few years leading to criminal charges, the resignation of the President of the University and the legendary football coach Joe Paterno, has now let the domain name PennState.com expire.
The domain name PennState.com is registered to Penn State formally known as the The Pennsylvania State University.
The University has owned the domain since at least 2001 according to DomainTools.com
The University let the domain name expired on December 26th, 2013 according to the whois record of its registrar Network Solutions
The domain PennState.com is currently in Pending Renewal or Deletion status and is the site is not resolving.
I’m not sure where the Minimum bid amount came from as this is a drop domain, not a domain name being offered for sale by the owner.
It would seem the minimum price must have come from Network Solutions, the registrar of the domain.
Network Solutions is owned by Web.com (WWWW) which also owns 50% of the auction site Namejet.com where the domain is being auctioned off in pre-release status.
PennState.com still can renew the domain name in which case the auction would be cancelled.
The backorder period to join the auction ends in 17 days.
I would not recommend that anyone in the domain investor space bid on the domain as its has a high risk of being taken in a UDRP or other legal proceeding.
Not sure why the registrar or namejet.com should be allowed to set a price on this domain, especially one like $4,583.00
The official site of the The Pennsylvania State University is PSU.edu
Network Solutions and Register.com arbitrarily set higher minimum bids on some expired domains @ NJ, generally the higher quality ones.
They are not letting the fair market decide, they are deciding the minimum price they will accept to sell a domain that has expired.
If the domain does not reach the minimum it normally ends up getting renewed and being transferred to a shady holding company tied to them.
There have also been cases where expired domains @ Network Solutions never even made it to NameJet. You can look at the case with Medicaid.com. It expired and instead it was sold by Network Solutions directly to a buyer outside the normal process.
Brad
Fumblerooski !
Do you consider this a slam dunk UDRP? Lots of college .coms are owned/used by individuals:
OregonDucks.com has an Amazon a-store on it
Uconn.com owned by someone in Korea
Clemson.com parked with ads and for sale banner
CrimsonTide.com has a WordPress site up on it
Are public universities considered public domain like politicians?