TD Bank has filed a UDRP for TDBank.xxx, making it the fifteenth entity to use UDRP in an effort to get control of a .xxx domain name.

This seems like a relatively low number to me for a TLD that has been out for over two months. I suspect this is because of the high cost of registration which dissuaded some people from cybersquatting. On the other hand, I figure companies will be quick to jump on infringing domains because of sensitive nature of the domains.

This number does not include filings using the Rapid Evaluation Service Statistics. There were fifteen of those as of February 8.

So far UDRP cases have been filed by a movie studio (foxstudios.xxx), universities (UTSystem.xxx and BaylorGirls.xxx), and jewelers (KayJewelers.xxx) to name a few.

Two cases have been decided. Entrepreneur/celebrity Richard Branson won RichardBranson.xxx and Texas grocery chain HEB won HEB.xxx.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. LivingSocial Files Its First Domain Name Complaint
2. ClickBank Files Complaint to Get Clickbank.co
3. Domainer Colin Pape Files Complaint with FTC Over Google

Google sent out a message today to publishers using Adsense for Domains.  After nearly 4 years of running the program, the company has decided to discontinue their hosted Adsense for Domains on undeveloped domain names.  The company is recommending migrating your domain names to a parking company.

Domainers relished the release of the Adsense for Domains program as a possible way to “cut out the middle man” and bypass the parking companies, but most domainers who spoke with DNN have found that the program provided no additional benefits.

One part of the announcement that seems puzzling, Google claims that the “benefits to our partner network” don’t make sense to continue, yet Google recommends switching to parking domains through a parking company that uses a Google feed.  Google is in essence including the middle-man in this scenario. The parking companies may be adding the benefit of aggregation, optimization and fraud screening that Google does not handle, but it would seem that this skill-set is in Google’s “wheelhouse” . After 4 years they could have easily handled these tasks if not great improved upon the optimization and screening already being done by smaller players.

See the full message from Google after the jump.

We’re contacting you because you’re using AdSense for Domains to monetize your undeveloped domains. After evaluating the benefits of our partner network, we’ve decided to retire the Hosted domains product within AdSense. Going forward, undeveloped domains will only be served through our existing AdSense for Domains distribution network.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (7)

This week’s chock-full end user sales report has 21 end user domain purchases. Notable buyers include Fool.com, Novartis, Southern Company, and The Future Project.

All sales were at Afternic unless otherwise noted.

Field Fresh Foods, Inc. paid $2,088 for FreshSnacks.com

501c3 The Future Project bought Dream.org for $25,000.

Electronics repair company Tekmedia Group, Inc bought TechMediaGroup.com for $1,088.

Seattle based fitness chain Allstar Fitness paid $1,788 for CrossSport.com.

Bath remodeling contractor Leading Renovations Inc got the descriptive name AffordableBathrooms.com for $1,888.

Landscape company Austin Outdoor (not in Austin, TX), which owns AustinOutdoor.net, upgraded to the .com for $2,733.50.

American Taekwondo Association bought WMAOnline.com for $1,621, no doubt for “World Martial Arts” online.

A California man bought FireCongress.com for $5,000.

Fool.com invested $2,000 for EditorsPick.com. For stock picks, perhaps?

Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd paid $1,700 for ValueLease.com.

Micro credit company 4finance Group bought 4Finance.net for $1,088.

Sho Cho Sushi Shop in Dubai bought Sushigo.net for $1,488.

Environmental Health Testing LLC paid $X for FoodSafetyAtHome.com for $1,788.

CampingWorld.com returned to the domain aftermarket to buy RVInsuranceAgency.com for $2,700 at Sedo.

DayTripper Tours, which already owns DayTripper.com, protected itself by buying DayTripperTours.com for $1,941.

Apollo Video Technology improved its web address AVT-USA.com for $2,288 by dropping the hyphen.

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG bought MenInfo.com for $2,300.

Rain Forest Tram, Ltd, which owns RainForestAdventure.com, bought CoralReefAdventures.com for $1,788.

Hosting forum company ProBoards bought FreeForum.net for $5,000.

Pacific Links International, owner of ThePacificLinks.com, shortened its web address to PacificLinks.com for $5,488.

Energy company The Southern Company, which owns George Power Company, bought SelectGeorgia.com for $1,295.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. End User Domain Purchases Over the Past Week
2. 14 End User Domain Name Sales from the Past Week
3. End User Domain Sales for the Past Week

CIRA, the .CA registry announced today that they published a Factbook about Domain Names on their site. The new site features information such as:

• History of Domain Names
• Current Domain Name Registration Statistics
• Information on registration trends and growth rates
• Statistics regarding the Canadian domain space
• Information on the Canadian Internet Economy

The registry will also be hosting the Canadian Internet Forum in the coming week (Feb 27th, 2012) in Ottawa.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (6)

Buy your .CO
It’s where big ideas belong

The recent decision in autoownersinsurance.com is a perfect example of things going from worse to horrible. While the decision itself contains many substantive flaws, my overwhelming issue is with the lack of due-process rights evidenced by this UDRP.

The complaint was limited to a 3-paragraph argument which asserted a USPTO registration for “Auto-Owners”. The complaint asserted lack of legitimate interest because the domain was used in PPC and included links to insurance (surprise). The complaint did not allege bad faith registration and allegations of bad faith use were limited to the same PPC argument.

Read more after the jump.

The timely response explained that the mark was a “design” mark obtained under 2(f). For those unfamiliar, a 2(f) application is required when a mark is not “distinctive”. The registration is granted based on the ex-parte submissions of the applicant. “Ex-parte” means that no one is allowed to challenge the application. We argued the domain was not identical or confusingly similar given the additional descriptive term which substantially expanded upon the mark. We noted that while the complainant alleged common law trademark rights in “auto owners insurance”, there was not one scintilla of evidence (not even a hair) supporting the claim.

Complainant’s legitimate interest and bad faith claims were limited to the fact insurance links appeared on the PPC page. The PPC results for insurance were hardly surprising since the domain was inherently descriptive. Insurance is after all required in most places and of obvious interest to “auto owners”.

On the February 14^th respondent received Complainant’s supplemental filing (“CSF”) which my email records showed to have been filed late.The CSF included 13 pages of argument and 9 new exhibits covering 191 pages, representing over 7.3 MEGABYTES of data. The CSF substantially amended the original complaint and for the first time included evidence supporting a common law trademark claim. Respondent started preparing a reply which was set for filing on the night of the 21^st. Just prior to filing, Respondents received a decision dated February 21^st! The decision makes it clear that the entirety of the CSF was considered by the panel. The decision does not even discuss the propriety of the CSF.

It is shocking that a UDRP panel would issue a decision 4 working days after receipt of a CSF, particularly one that was of such length and magnitude. There was no communication from the panel and four (4) days to respond to what amounted to an entirely new complaint with substantially more allegations and evidence is blatantly unfair. The timing of the decision implies that it was written on Friday for submission on Monday and immediately issued on Tuesday. Given the length of the decision (13 pages), it is unlikely to have been written on Monday and I have my doubts that a 3-member panel would have worked over the weekend on a UDRP.

Aside from the lack of opportunity to respond, I was personally shocked that the panel would have the CSF considered at all. The UDRP provides for supplemental filings only upon panel request.

12. Further Statements

In addition to the complaint and the response, the Panel may request, in its sole discretion, further statements or documents from either of the Parties.

Although NAF has its notorious Supplemental Rule 7, NAF panels have held that SR 7 is controlled by Policy Paragraph 12 (“[T]he controlling provision is Paragraph 12 of ICANN’s Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the “Rules”), under which discretion to request such supplementation rests with the Panel.” (Deep Foods, Inc. v. Jamruke, LLC. c/o Manish Patel, FA0648190 (NAF April 10, 2006)). SR 7(f) prohibits supplementals that would amend a complaint.

Even those panels accepting supplemental filings have limited them to exceptional circumstances. Prior panels have repeatedly held that and the failure to submit evidence of trademark rights does not qualify as “exceptional” and “does not constitute sufficiently exceptional or proper circumstances for the Panelist to exercise discretion and to request any further information from the Complainant.” (Autobytel.com inc. v. Sand WebNames, D2001-0076); see also: Universal City Studios, Inc. v. G.A.B. Enterprises, D2000-0416 “There is no provision in the Rules for a party to file an additional submission without leave of the Panel.”).

The Policy specifically limits the breadth of supplemental rules:

“Supplemental Rules means the rules adopted by the Provider administering a proceeding to supplement these Rules. Supplemental Rules shall not be inconsistent with the Policy or these Rules and shall cover such topics as fees, word and page limits and guidelines, file size and format modalities, the means for communicating with the Provider and the Panel, and the form of cover sheets.”

By listing examples, the Policy makes it clear that supplemental rules are permitted to cover only non-substantive matters. Imposing a 5-day deadline for a supplemental reply is clearly non-administrative and such a short period inherently conflicts with the Policy.

In this decision the panel ignored the language of Paragraph 12 AND the prior precedent which limits supplementals to (a) those requested by the panel and (b) to those reflecting exceptional situations where Complainant could not have reasonably anticipated the need to incorporate the supplemental matters in the complaint.

By ignoring Paragraph 12 and the Policy limitation on supplemental rules, the respondent is faced with a bush-whacking opportunity. The Complaint has all the time in the world to prepare and file the complaint (even laches is not a defense). The Respondent is limited to a 20-day window. The CSF amounted to a complete “do-over”. The complainant filed a boiler-plate “place-holder” complaint and then filed its “real” complaint as a “supplemental” leaving Respondent with virtually no time in which to respond.

Given the repeated references to fairness (both in the UDRP and in NAF’s own website), the issuing of the decision without an opportunity to respond is morally and legally wrong.

ICANN must resolve this issue. NAF’s SR7 is in inherent conflict with the UDRP which is the only binding obligation of the respondent. The ADR provider may not adopt rules that are in conflict with the UDRP and the panels may not enforce supplemental rules to the extent they are in conflict with the UDRP and the basic concept of fairness that is supposed to prevail under the Policy. By failing to address such abuse, ICANN is exposing the entire contractual arbitration process to distain and legal challenge. While not perfect, stability and inherent fairness is fundamental to the proper functioning of the UDRP. The panel (and NAF) in this case ignored both.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (5)

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The Purple Heart is a military decoration given to those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for the U.S. military: being wounded or killed in duty.

The Military Order of the Purple Heart was chartered by Congress in 1958 for recipients of the Purple Heart.

The group, which has a web site at PurpleHeart.org, is now asking World Intellectual Property Organization to award it the domain names PurpleHeart.com and purpleheartcardonation.net in separately filed arbitration cases.

Earlier this year the group filed a complaint for purpleheart-donations.org, but it was terminated when the owner agreed to hand over the domains.

I think this will be an interesting case to watch. I was unaware of The Military Order of the Purple Heart’s exact connection to the Purple Heart. But the group has filed lawsuits in the past.

If the group wins, I would expect it to file many more UDRP cases. A simple search on Google for “Purple Heart” returns a bunch of different domains including the keyword.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Lazy Complainants Lose Two Cases to Serial Cybersquatter in One Week
2. Court Greenlights Sex.com Order

ARI Registry Services has won a contract with the governments of New South Wales and Victoria to provide registry services for .sydney, .melbourne and .victoria, the company announced today.

ARI definitely had a leg up in responding to the government’s RFP given that it’s located in Australia.

Ernst & Young and Melbourne IT will assist with developing the applications for the three top level domains.

Yesterday Melbourne IT announced that it is working on 120 new top level domain applications and expects this number to grow by the application deadline next month.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Melbourne IT to work on at least 120 new top level domain applications
2. ICANN blames Melbourne IT for Panix.com Debacle
3. NameMedia Auctions Expiring Melbourne IT Domains

Google is ending its Adsense for Domains program that allowed users of its online Adsense program to park their domain names.

The company recommends that customers migrate their parked domain names to a domain name parking company. A message sent to effected publishers this morning includes a link to a migration guide, although that link does not appear functional at this time. [Update: the link now works.]

Here’s how the program will wind down:

March 21: You’ll no longer be able to create new Hosted domains
April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it’ll no longer be possible to earn from them
June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts

Google launched the self-serve program in 2008, much to the chagrin of Google’s domain parking feed partners.

Initial fears by these partners were unfounded, as the self-service solution never had the muscle to compete with the third party solutions. Its optimization was basic and parking domains with it at first required changing A records and CNAME records rather than simply changing nameservers. It also had limited templates, although it later added more.

[The original headline for this article referred to "Direct Adsense for Domains" program. The "Direct" terminology is actually part of the program that remains, so I have changed the title to reflect Google's term "hosted".]

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Google Kills URL Forwarding as Yahoo Caps Some Non-.Com Domains
2. Google Adsense For Domains Now Makes Parking Easier
3. Google Adsense for Domains Expands Use of Keyword Hints

Facebook URLs – Yours today, gone tomorrow? Facebook is planning to create city portals

As German news-site Heise Online reported Facebook apparently took away the URL facebook.com/muenchen from the official portal of the city Munich (Muenchen in German) first citing technical difficulties as the reason. For more than a week the Facebook page has not been reachable under its old address.

The page had gathered almost 400,000 fans according to Lajos Csery, who is the manager of the company operating the city portal. In an interview with Bayerischer Rundfunk, he stated that there had been no advance notice from Facebook and when they inquired about the issue they were told that there was a technical issue. Later on they found out that Facebook is planning to set up their own city portals and Facebook has now moved the page to facebook.com/Stadtportal.Muenchen (city portal Munich), which so far only has about 1,200 “likes”. Facebook told the operator that the “fans” will still be moved to the new page. City names without additions are no longer permitted as Facebook URL names according to the recently changed rules of Facebook.

In a similar story pharmaceutical company Merck sued Facebook, in order to receive information why “their” Facebook URL to a US company with the same name. According to the BBC, Facebook had cut a deal with the company but had not followed through with giving the company the URL.

As Facebook becomes an important marketing tool and usernames and vanity URLs become more coveted, you can be sure that Facebook will find a way to monetize on this.  Savvy marketers should be more and more wary of using these URLs in offline marketing and protect themselves for the possibility that “their” Facebook URL will be taken away too.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (4)

We’ve included sales from Afternic, Bido, DomainMarket, Flippa and Sedo in our report.

See the full list after the jump.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (3)

Buy your .CO
It’s where big ideas belong

25 million people will soon be sent an email telling them to go to iPhone4Settlement.com. And someone has already typosquatted it.

iPhone4Settlement.com is the URL selected by Kurtzman Carson Consultants to manage the claims process for a proposed settlement with Apple over antennae problems when it released the iPhone 4. The web address has been featured in countless mainstream articles over the past 24 hours.

Kurtzman Carson Consultants registered the domain on February 15. Today someone registered wwwiPhone4Settlement.com (missing a dot after the www). It resolves to a server holding page for now. Although the whois record is protected by privacy, it shows a registrant of “SK Communications”.

iPhone4Settlement.com hasn’t even gone live yet, but it will get a ton of traffic when the process starts. I bet the typo gets quite a bit, too.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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No related posts.

25 million people will soon be sent an email telling them to go to iPhone4Settlement.com. And someone has already typosquatted it.

iPhone4Settlement.com is the URL selected by Kurtzman Carson Consultants to manage the claims process for a proposed settlement with Apple over antennae problems when it released the iPhone 4. The web address has been featured in countless mainstream articles over the past 24 hours.

Kurtzman Carson Consultants registered the domain on February 15. Today someone registered wwwiPhone4Settlement.com (missing a dot after the www). It resolves to a server holding page for now. Although the whois record is protected by privacy, it shows a registrant of “SK Communications”.

iPhone4Settlement.com hasn’t even gone live yet, but it will get a ton of traffic when the process starts. I bet the typo gets quite a bit, too.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Sedo had published a video as well that explains the value of premium domain names.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (2)

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I have a problem and want your opinion.

I’ve been running the Domain Name Wire Survey for seven years. It asks people for their opinions on the state of the domain industry and which service providers are best.

The survey was never scientific, but the results seemed to jive with reality. Yet last year social media campaigns by service providers started to skew the results. This year it went to a whole new level with some companies you’ve never heard of suddenly receiving hundreds of write-in votes.

I don’t blame these companies for asking their loyal customers to vote for them. In a way it’s quite telling; if your customers take the time to fill out a survey on your behalf then they really like you. On the other hand, I don’t think the results have any basis in reality.

I have a few options, none of which are perfect:

1. Exclude survey results from people who self-reported owning fewer than 50 domains. Many people who respond to social media pushes aren’t really the target market for this blog and own very few domains. The results look more “normal” when you remove these survey takers, which represent about half of the 1,600 respondents. However, I hate to exclude someone’s voice just because they aren’t as big as others.

2. Post the results as-is but with my commentary on why they came out the way they did.

3. Don’t post results on questions about service providers.

What would you like me to do?

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Domain Name Survey Results
2. Domain Name Wire Survey Results
3. Domain Name Wire Survey Update

Melbourne IT has disclosed that it already has 120 new top level domain applications it is working on as of February 14. It expects that number to hit 150 by the end of the application period in April.

The disclosure was made in the company’s annual financial presentation.

Melbourne IT’s Digital Brand Services division saw revenue grow to $6.2M AUS in the second half of 2011, which it credits to “new .brand domain applications and brand protection” services.

The company previously said it was in talks with 150 potential new TLD applicants, but now it’s putting firm numbers to how many it expects to assist with applications.

Overall the company predicts 1,000 to 1,500 applications will be received, which is in line with what registry VeriSign anticipates.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. ICANN May Consider Pre-Applications for New Top Level Domain Names
2. Verisign predicts 1,000-1,500 new TLD applications and up to 2/3 .brand
3. Up Next, Trademark Applications for .Auto, .Tax, and .Food

A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) arbitration panel has ordered the Twitter typo Twittter.com (with three t’s) be transferred to Twitter.

The domain name should be transferred within ten days.

It’s no wonder Twitter was upset about this domain name. It currently resolves to a page on SocialRewardCentral.com that mimics the look and feel of Twitter:

Users are tricked into thinking Twitter is offering free prizes if they divulge their e-mail address (and later take part in offers).

This is the fifth time Twitter has turned to WIPO to get a domain name. Three of the cases involve popular typos such as Twittr.com and Twiter.com.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Twitter Wins Twiter.com Domain Name Case
2. WIPO gives Twitter popular typo Twittr.com
3. How Twitter was named and bought Twitter.com for $7,500

Thus they have decided to roll this service out publicly. As a part of the new offering, they are launching a monthly newsletter.

Domain Guardians was founded last year as an ICANN accredited registrar providing domain estate planning and management services to domain professionals.

Disclaimer: Adam Strong, Managing Editor & Owner of DNN, also is a partner in Domain Guardians.

(c) 2012 DomainNameNews.com (1)