Resort Sues Hawaiian Girl

While reading The Honolulu Advertiser I saw an article about a Maui resident who was being sued.

The story goes something like this…. girl registers and runs Kapaluaadventuretours.com – company that developed the Kapalua Resort (Maui Land & Pineapple Co) files a complaint in federal court. Apparently they own the Kapalua trademarks. oops!

That’s what you get if you play with trademarks kids!

ScottishDailyMail Handed Over To Associated Newspapers

scottishdailymail.co.uk is now in the hands of Associated Newspapers after Nominet gave them ownership of internet domain name. Apparently it was used to point visitors to rival media including the Independent newspaper.

Nominet spokesperson Margaret Briffa said “It is clear that since registration the domain name has been used in a manner which took unfair advantage or was unfair or detrimental to the complainant’s rights.”

Foreclosure.com Owner to Acquire Property.com

Brad Geisen, owner of foreclosure.com has reached an agreement with Rick Schwartz to acquire Property.com. Aparently Rick purchased it in 2005 for $750k. The terms have not been disclosed.

Family Loses narnia.mobi to CS Lewis

The parents of 11 year old boy registered narnia.mobi back in Sept 06 so that their son could use it for email.  Fast forward to 2008 and the World Intellectual Property Organisation rules in favor of the C. S. Lewis estate.

The mother, Gillian Fergusson told the BBC that she was shocked by the decision. “We provided very clear statements from the internet registration company saying that we had not tried to make any money and yet somehow it has just simply ignored the evidence.”

Apparently, registering an e-mail address for a child is not legitimate use!

Ms Fergusson said: “We have not done anything illegal or wrong, we were perfectly entitled to have this domain name.

“There was three months in which they could have registered this. There was a private period for any trademark holder to register any .mobi domain name when they went on sale in 2006.

“We did not buy ours until after that three-month period had expired and it was open for public sale.”

Domain Renewal Postal Mail

As a professional domainer with an ever growing portfolio I tend to attract spam – usually of the email kind. Most of my domains have whois privacy protection, some of the details like my email address change on a daily basis. As such, when spammers try to send me junk, it just bounces.

One thing I can’t seem to shake off is this unsolicited postal mail asking me to renew my domains with registrars and resellers. Yesterday I received three letters in the post. Two were from the “Domain Renewal Group” and one was from the “WorldWideWeb Register”.

I have uploaded a high resolution image of the Domain Renewal Group letter (936k jpg) as well as the WorldWideWeb Register letter (1.7meg jpg). Of course, I have removed some of the identifying information from them.

The Domain Renewal Group letter was printed on paper that’s a big bigger than standard A4, whereas the WorldWideWeb Register used very thin quality A4 sized paper, kind of like the old credit card receipt paper.

Domain Renewal Group

The terms and conditions are in tiny little print and are extremely difficult to read. In fact, you might need a magnifying class to read it properly. Here are some interesting paragraphs:

“If lawsuit(s) are threatened: If we are sued or threatened with lawsuit in connection with Service(s) provided to you, we may turn to you to indemnify us and hold us harmless from the claims and expenses……”

“You warrant that your use of our services is not going go subject us to any claim(s). You further agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless us and applicable registry administrator(s)…..and all such parties‘ directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses…….”

“All fees are non-refundable, in whole or in part, even if your domain name registration is suspended, cancelled or transferred prior to the end of your then current registration term, unless this Agreement specifically provides for a refund.”

When it comes to renewal costs they are VERY expensive – AU$40 to renew a .com for 1 year! They also suggest other names – in my case for .org and .biz at AU$75 each!

WorldWideWeb Register

Their letter tends to focus on the “Updating of your data:” which is the subtitle of the letter.

The letter was sent to my mailing address, but I didn’t own the domain name that it mentioned. The letter had a generic “company name” as the owner. When I checked the domain name, using whois, it was registered to a different owner.

The first line of their letter reads:

“We kindly ask you to update your subscription ensuring that you include your correct data, thus allowing all Internet users to contact you without any problem. In the attached document, you will find basic data about your company, which you should check in order to avoid publication of private websites.”

Apart from the sentence, not actually making sense – I wonder how many people would receive this letter, see that their details are wrong and then provide the correct information. The other interesting thing is that the domain name they mentioned was a .com.au. Traditionally the underlying registry data for .com.au has been hidden away. Perhaps this is a way to obtain that data, domain by domain?

An extract from page two of the letter reads “The applicant must correctly supply their information so that the contracted company may include it in the relevant editions of the World Web Company Register on CD-Rom, as well as in its Internet database…..”

The next page reads “…. I give GT@P – Guia Telefax Anuario Profesional, S.L. the order to publish my company data in the next three annual editions of its Web Company Register, both on the Internet (www.webcompanyregister.com) and on CD-Rom. The total cost per edition of the service contracted …… is 877 euros.”

Wow, so I pay you 877 euro to have my personal details appear in your database! Where do I sign?

Microsoft Cries – Google & Yahoo Get 90% Of Net Ads

Microsoft senior VP-general counsel Brad Smith told the US Senate and House judiciary committees:

“Never before in the history of advertising has one company been in a position to control prices on up to 90% of advertising in a single medium.  Not in television, not in radio, not in publishing. It should not happen on the Internet.”

Of course Microsoft is spewing that they “missed the Internet” back in the 90′s, failed to grab any substantial advertising market share during the dot com boom and then failed again in 2008 with the Yahoo deal.

So if the US government say no to Google, then why wouldn’t it be anticompetitive for Microsoft to own Yahoo? What’s this mean for domainers? Two players owning the entire advertising market! Can you say collusion kids? Ok – it means lower payout rates and a HUGE barrier to entry for a 3rd force.

Google Sued Over Parked Domain Ads

Documents filed in the California Northern District Court show that Hal K. Levitte is suing Google Inc.

It’s been reported that Levitte ran an advertising campaign for over 2 months and received 202,528 impressions from parked pages. Apparently he only received 668 clicks and zero conversions.

It’s alleged that Levitte spent $136.11 on advertising on parked domains and error pages, which equates to 15.3% of his $887.67 ad campaign.

So, what do you do when your $800 ad campaign doesn’t work? Well, if you live in America, the chances are that you carry a lawyer with you everywhere you go, so its just a matter of pressing the “on button” and hey presto!

Seriously though, I don’t know all the details; he might have a case! I would have thought the legal fees would be more than $800. Based purely on the financials, this thing doesn’t make sense to me.

Nominet Changes DRS Policy and Procedure

UK based Nominet is changing its dispute resolution policy with the new changes coming into effect on July 29 2008.

While there has been a truckload of modifications, here are a couple that stand out:

1. For those disputes where there is a response, the case goes into mediation and you have to pay an expert fee of £750 plus VAT.

2. “Respondents can pay for an Expert decision if the Complainant declines to pay, in order to request a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.”

3. A “likelihood of confusion” factor has been introduced. This means that a threatened use of a domain name may be evidence of an Abusive Registration.

A full summary of the changes is available on the Nominet web site.

Carlsbad Takes Legal Action Over Golf Course Domain

A lawsuit filed in the federal court in San Diego claims that Prince Reza Shah hijacked and unlawfully profited from the domain name thecrossingsatcarlsbad.com.

SignOnSanDiego reports “according to a domain registration site, Shah owns more than 280 names, some of which are for sale. Among the domain names are “tiger-woods.mobi” and “trump-golf.mobi.”

Apparently the city held a contest in 2006 to name the golf course and announced the name on Oct. 18, 2006.  Shah applied for the trademark on Nov. 30, 2006.

New Security Flaws In ICANN Proposal

Last month I talked about ICANNs new proposal to allow domain names with non Latin characters. The media has yet to realize the true implications of this, so I’m going to spell it out in “plain English”.

• www.pàypal.com
• www.ebày.com
• www.bànk.com
• www.päy.com

Notice that mark on your screen? In German its called an umlaut, also known as an accent mark.  What does it mean for the Internet:

1. An increase in phishing sites that look like the real thing.
2. A new opportunity for typosquatters to profit from registering domain names.

So when is an a, not an à’ ? What happens when an international visitor goes to www.pàypal.com in their browser? Will they go to www.paypal.com or www.pàypal.com? That depends on the characterset they use!

For domainers, its time to start thinking about those new domain names to hand register. For corporates, it time to think about tracking down all those domain names with a view to getting them registered when this thing goes live.