Company granted patent for typosquatting and cybersquatting tools. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today granted Microsoft U.S. patent number 7,756,987 (pdf) for “Cybersquatter Patrol”. The patent is for a system of generating lists of typo and cybersquatted domains and peeling ba...

Answer: rarely. There’s an old adage in the domain name industry that a .net domain name is worth 10% of the same .com. Some also like to say that other extensions (.biz, .info, etc.) are worth 1% of the .com’s value. The problem is it’s simply not true. Or rather it’s imp...

[Editor's note: Last Friday I interviewed Local.com CEO Heath Clarke and Senior VP of Corporate Development Peter Hutto about their company's acquisition of Octane360. In doing research, I realized the first article I ever wrote on DNW -- March 9, 2005 -- was about their company's purchase of the ...

Denied sunrise applications and additional releases from .co registry now available. [Update: the full list has been published by some registrars this morning.] About 1,500 applications for .co domain names through the trademark sunrise process have been denied, and the domain names are now availab...

Court of Appeals denies VeriSign’s motion, setting up a potential trial over the company’s .com monopoly. One year after a big legal setback, VeriSign has been setback again by the same court. Today the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied (pdf) VeriSign’s motion for a rehearing of...

Celebrities, parking woes, big companies, and more. Here are a few recent UDRP filings and decisions of note. BuzzAldrin.net – Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin has picked up the domain name BuzzAldrin.net. He already owns BuzzAldrin.com, which he uses to promote his media products and iPhone and...

The leading whois resource launches its iPhone app. DomainTools launched its iPhone (slash-ipod touch-slash-ipad) app this week. It’s a fairly simple app for now, but the company says it’s working to add lots of functionality in the near future. For now you get a few basic functions. ...

US country code auction sells over $40,000 worth of domain names. [Updated: the official tally is 30 domains sold. I originally reported 29 domains sold.] Moniker‘s .us domain name auction sold 29 30 of 86 domain names, or 35%. That’s a much stronger showing than recent online auctio...

Domain Apps off to strong start. Just two days after WhyPark released its new Domain Apps, customers have installed 7,000 apps on their WhyPark domain names, WhyPark founder Craig Rowe told me this morning. That’s a strong start, but Rowe is working on ways to make it even easier to add the c...

Catalog issued well in advance with some big names. One of my (and others’) complaints about live domain name auctions is that the catalogs are released at the last minute. That hardly gives time for serious buyers to pull together the necessary money or approval to make big purchases. But M...

Chronology of registration “fatal” to complainant’s case. Marchex has successfully defended the domain name uFirst.com, which it acquired as part of the acquisition of Ultimate Search. The challenge was brought by a United First Financial, a company that claims it can help you &#...

Lawsuit filed after expired domains sold on NameJet. John Zuccarini has filed a complaint (pdf) against NameJet, eNom, VeriSign, and Network Solutions in U.S. District Court over the transfer and auctioning of a number of his domain names. A number of Zuccarini’s domain names were transferred...

Sister company to popular domain registrar offer domain reseller and registrar software. Dark Blue Sea, parent company of domain name registrar and parking company Fabulous, is getting ready to unveil Yexa this month. A brochure for the product describes it as “turnkey, friendly and affordabl...

Company takes its acclaimed Pro events on the road. Sedo is one of the most international companies in the domain name industry, so it’s fitting that the company will soon be taking its popular SedoPro events on a world tour. Until now, Sedo has organized annual SedoPro Partner Forums in luxu...

Domain name losing value as lawsuit works its way through the courts. DONE! Ventures lawsuit against NBC Universal and General Electric Company has been moved from state court to U.S. District Court, and there the parties are fighting over what to do with the domain names pending trial. As backgrou...

No big sales this week, but still a strong performance. Sedo rang up another $800,000 worth of domain name sales in the past week, although the domain broker didn’t turn in any six figure sales. The top sale was 363.com, which brought home $41,000. The second highest sale is notable, with d...

Here’s how to maximize your chances of getting the .co domain names you want — without breaking the bank. .Co domain name registration will be open to the public July 20. But if you want to get a good domain name, you’ll need to pre-register the domains prior to the general rel...

Tiny island nations, the blame game, getting bored making money, and plastic toys. Here’s a look at a few of the more interesting domain name related stories from across the web over the past couple days. -Tuvalu isn’t happy with its current .TV deal. Remember, country code domains don...

You should comment on this proposed new procedure for hijacked domain names. It’s rare that I ask the domain community to comment on a particular topic at ICANN. It’s even rarer that domain investors actually follow through. But there’s an important process going on to establis...

Domain parking alternative releases major upgrade today. I’ve been excited about WhyPark‘s Domain Apps since WhyPark founder Craig Rowe first started talking with me about them at Domainer Mardi Gras. He then gave me a sneak peak at TRAFFIC in Vancouver. Today they are available to in...

Hint: It has nothing to do with the actual TLD. Were you surprised to see so many new TLD applicants advocating for ICANN to approve .xxx at the ICANN meeting last month? Regardless of their thoughts on the top level domain name and the process, they had their reasons. I had caught wind of this a ...

I need a real vacation. You’d think a holiday weekend would help me relax and forget about domain names. Apparently not. Last night I had a dream about new top level domain names. It went something like this… My phone started ringing in the middle of the night, and people were leaving...

Another toll free prefix will be released this fall. Top level domain names aren’t the only identifier resource being expanded in coming years. Later this year the first toll free number prefix since 2000 will be released: 855. The numbers will be released in October. Previous releases afte...

Company loses fight for domain name. Cable and communications giant Charter Communications has lost a dispute over the domain name CharterBusiness.com. The company claimed rights to the domain name based on a number of trademarks that were filed or first used in business after the domain name was r...

Why are so many companies always in attack mode, and get defensive when criticized? It’s because they’re weak. In all my years in the domain name industry, I’ve discovered there are two distinct types of service providers. 1. Get very defensive whenever someone critiques their ...