The New Yorker Magazine just did a cover story on the new gTLD program entitled "The Great Internet Land Grab" "Suddenly reorganizing the way we navigate the web with new strings like .guru, .club, or .google might seem frivolous or strange, but entities like ICANN and its stakeholders insist that they will make the Web more intuitive and user-friendly; an address like AdoptA.dog is slightly … [Read more...]
Brand Protection Fails: This Weeks Trademark Infringing Domains That Brands Let Drop & Get Registered By Others
Welcome to another installment in our continuing series of trademark infringing domain names that Brands allowed to let drop and wind up in third parties hands. Once again these are the same type of domains that we see Brands pending $1,500 a pop to file a UDRP on, plus attorneys fees. However the Brands have seemly no interest is getting these domains off the drop for as low as $10.. As … [Read more...]
Police Officer In Jail For Buying Domains Of Police Chief & Pointing Them To Porn
According to turnto10.com the site of an NBC affiliate station in Rhode Island, "A Richmond police officer faces charges after state police said he purchased domain names containing variations of the chief's name which redirected Internet users to pornographic web sites." The domain name involved according to one report were the elwoodjohnson.com and elwoodjohnsonjr.com. "Steven Gravier, 41, … [Read more...]
Right Before Start Of Regular Season, The NFL Gains Control Of Almost 1K Bang On Domain Names
With the regular NFL season looking to kick off in just a couple of weeks the NFL gained control of just under 1,000 bang on domain names yesterday. The domain names were all transferred to the NFL's brand protection company MarkMonitor.com. The domain names had many different owners according to the whois records but many of the records appeared to have just made up information like the … [Read more...]
Louis Vuitton Files Federal Cybersquatting Suit over 98 Domain Names
For the 2nd day in a row a trademark holder has bypassed the UDRP process and went straight to federal court to file a suit over trademarked infringing domains. This time it is luxury handbag maker Louis Vuitton that filed the suit under the ACPA seeking $100,000 in statutory damages per domain, plus the domain and attorney fees on 96 domain names Here are the domain names subject to the … [Read more...]
According To Alexa There Is No Traffic Leakage From Beat.La To BeatLa.com
For those that think that branding a site on any non-.com is going to automatically lead to traffic bleed over to the matching .com I present the case of Beat.La. The domain name was purchased just a couple of weeks ago by the Phoenix Suns on Sedo for $5,300 The purchase of the domain and subsequent launched received a lot of publicity from the mainstream media and sports from the … [Read more...]
Report: Godaddy Acquires Locu.com For $70 Million
GoDaddy, said it had acquired San Francisco startup Locu according to Allthingsd.com "While the company did not disclose the terms of the deal, sources close to the situation said it paid $70 million in cash and stock for the company." There are also earnouts for the two dozen employees of Locu going to GoDaddy. "Locu, which was founded out of MIT in Massachusetts in 2011, helps … [Read more...]