Big UK domain name to sell later today. An auction for MobilePhones.co.uk ends today on Sedo at 6:31 PM EST. The domain name has attracted 6 bidders and 18 bids, pushing the price up to 40,500 GBP — roughly $60,000 USD. Another sale in the works at Sedo is the web site and domain name Specie...

American Express gets into .me UDRP game, Samsung starts collecting ccTLDs. American Express has joined a list of companies to use domain name arbitration to get their .me domain names. The company filed a complaint with WIPO for AmericanExpress.me, which is owned by a New Jersey resident. The do...

6 updates from Domain Name Wire. Here are six quick updates. Four are related to domain names; the other two aren’t but are worth checking out. On-Topic 1. I have updated the DNW disclosures page. It describes my role in the domain name industry as it is relevant to the site. Please read i...

Large affiliate network trims its ranks. In a major shakeup in the affiliate network world, Hydra Network has dumped 88% of its affiliates, leaving it with fewer than 2,000 large publishers. Back in my days of affiliate arbitrage through pay-per-click, I frequently earned more than $5,000 a month f...

Myths about sales prices grow like weeds. With Sex.com hitting the auction block next week, mainstream media are in a tizzy writing about the auction of the “world’s most valuable domain name”. As usual, they’re comparing it to other big ticket domain sales. The only probl...

Company defends generic domain name and explains legitimate reasons for blocking robots.txt from parked domain names. Marchex subsidiary MDNH has successfully defended the domain name Clara.com from an attack by a magazine publisher in Spain. Complainant Rba Edipresse, S.L. owns a magazine called C...

Second domain name auction in Las Vegas scheduled for later this month. DomainConsultant premiered “Domain Madness” last year, a (mostly) online auction that was broadcast live from The Palms in Las Vegas. They’re back at it again this year, organizing an auction that will conclu...

Online pharmacy argues “Rugs” is merely a typo of “Drugs”. Take two of these andfire your lawyer in the morning. Here’s an interesting UDRP case from National Arbitration Forum. The company that runs CanadaDrugs.com, a popular online pharmacy, filed a complaint against...

Go Daddy set to hit another milestone. [Update: Go Daddy hit the milestone earlier today.] About six months after crossing the 30 million domain name mark, The Go Daddy Group is set to surpass 40 million domains under management, most likely on Wednesday. So if you register a domain name tomorrow,...

.Org registry PIR wants to bring best practices to IDN top level domain names. One of the big questions facing registries of existing top level domain names is how they should pursue Internationalized Domain Name “equivalents” of their domain names when they become available. These so-...

Guagua.com hits six figures, Domaining.com owner scores nice sale. Sedo has sold the domain name Guagua.com for $100,000. Guagua has a number of different meanings, including being the name of a language and a municipality in the Phillipines. The company also helped broker the sale of Pepe.com for...

Domain Name Wire started publishing five years ago today. On March 9, 2005, I wrote the first post on Domain Name Wire, reporting on the sale of Local.com for $700,000. 3,141 posts later, Domain Name Wire is running as strong as ever. If you’re reading this, I’d like to thank you for m...

ICANN meeting in Nairobi running well, report attendees. With all of the hype around security and possible disruptions, those in attendance at ICANN’s meeting in Nairobi say all is going well. Attorney John Berryhill writes “The summit and the ICANN meeting are both running smoothly he...

Debtors behind on bills for the past year. With Sex.com heading to the auction block, there’s a been a lot of talk about what went wrong with the current owner, Escom LLC. According to a Reuters article, Escom has been in default on its loan for over a year to lender DOM Partners. “T...

Internet Commerce Association wants ICANN to act quickly on move by UDRP provider. Internet Commerce Association counsel Philip Corwin has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom and Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate-Thrush asking it to act on Czech Arbitration Court’s new UDRP polic...

Amazon says “see you later” to Colorado’s affiliate merchants. Thank inept state representatives. Colorado is the latest state to exacerbate unemployment problems by effectively canning its affiliate marketers. Colorado has joined a list of states that either proposed or enacted ...

Domain companies en route to Austin later this week. Several domain name companies are heading to Austin later this week for the start of the annual South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival. The Interactive portion of the event attracted over 10,000 attendees last year. Many stay i...

Study says WWW typo is most common prefix in trademark infringing domain names. A new study from Corporation Service Company (CSC) — which provides trademark protection services — shows that www is the most common prefix to brand names used to “trademark infringers” in domai...

ICANN session on trademark protection suggests URS is close to being finalized. Of all of the trademark protections being discussed for the launch of new top level domain names, it looks like Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) may be the closest to being approved. Uniform Rapid Suspension is a sort of...

A look back at my position on new TLDs, 9 months later. Last May I wrote an editorial titled “Why I’m opposed to new top level domains”. I outlined six reasons that I didn’t like the current proposal for new top level domain names. Nine months later, I still have many of th...

UDRP filing goes after three highly generic .net domain names. Here’s a domain name dispute filing that must be complicated: someone has filed a UDRP for Recent.net, Than.net, and They.net. The dispute was filed with National Arbitration Forum, which does not disclose the complainant’s...

Duh. More TLDs cause confusion. Perhaps it’s outweighed by the innovation? This morning I read Wired’s article on ICANN, which discusses new top level domain names. It quotes David Farber saying “I don’t think that [adding new TLDs] creates innovation. I think that creates ...

How to build repeat traffic to your blog. I originally started writing this post as ways to get more traffic to your domain name blog. But it really applies to any type of blog. The message is that you need to think about growing your blog traffic over the long term, and that requires trust. I o...

Heads of state from six African countries to hold meeting at same venue during ICANN meeting. As if security threats and big name companies backing out of next week’s ICANN meeting in Nairobi weren’t enough, attendees to the meeting are about to face another big headache. Nick Tomasso, ...

Company files patent application for cross-selling business cards based on registrant information. The Go Daddy Group, parent company of domain name registrar GoDaddy, has filed two patent applications related to ordering business cards along with a domain name registration. U.S. patent applicati...