Minds + Machines Group Limited (AIM:MMX), announce today that it won the new gTLD auctions for the new domain name extensions .Law and .Vip and lost private auctions for .Design, .Flowers, .Group, .Realestate and .Video and pocketed approximately $6.2 million (£3.8 million).
The net cash to the Minds + Machines includes the amounts paid for .Vip and .Law, and is also net of auction fees and refunds that the Company received from ICANN for withdrawing applications.
The Company also participated in the ICANN-sponsored auctions for .Vip and .Tech, in which it purchased .Vip for approximately $3.1 million, and lost the auction for .Tech. The auction for .Tech was sponsored by ICANN, and unlike private auctions the Company did not receive funds from the winning bidder of .Tech.
In relation to .Law, a third party participated with the Company in the private auction. The third party will solely receive a share of ongoing .Law revenues and will not be involved in the management, operations, or policy-making of the .Law TLD.
The Company now has interests in 26 uncontested domains which it either wholly/majority owns or in which it has a JV interest.
The Company also has commercial interests in a further 6 client uncontested domains.
The company also announced it lost the private auction for .Flowers which took place the first week of September; which was won by Uniregistry and the new gTLD auction for .Group in which Minds + Machines had an interest in which concluded in August and was won by Donuts.
The ICANN sponsored auctions for .Tech and .Vip completed the week of 8 September; and the private auctions for .design, .law .realestate, and .video, took place in the week of 15 September.
Yesterday we noted that Donuts won the private auction for .Video, beating out Amazon Uniregistry, and Minds + Machines.
Back in February 2013, the company announced that they had secured $15 million dollars from an unknown investor, for one particular unnamed string, and .Law could have been the one based on today’s announcement.
It also interesting to note that Minds + Machines lost a private auction for .Lawyer (and with losing .Website at the same auction) pocked $4.8 million.
Minds + Machines was the only applicant for .abogado (spanish for Lawyer) to add to its .Law gTLD
Donuts/Rightside won the rights to .Attorney, .Lawyer and .Legal
Google is the sole applicant for .Esq
In .Law the losing applicants were Famous Four, Straat.co which is associated with the .Co registry which sold to Neustar for $109 Million, Merchant Law Group, Donuts, and Radix.
