Moniker and SnapNames join Key-Systems stable

KeyDrive has acquired rival registrar Moniker and rival aftermarket player SnapNames from Oversee.net, according to a statement on the company’s web site.

The deal, which closed in January, would make the combined company the sixth-largest ICANN-accredited registrar, with over 5.4 million domains under management, KeyDrive said.

KeyDrive formed with the merger of German registrar Key-Systems and aftermarket services provider NameDrive last July. It’s based in NameDrive’s native Luxembourg.

The deal gives the primarily European company an additional footprint in the US market. Moniker is based in Florida, SnapNames in Oregon.

It’s a not-too-soon exit for Moniker, which had a disappointing 2011 largely defined by the super-fast churning of domains under management and the regular canning of staff.

I’ve been hearing rumors that the two Oversee units were on the auction block for months.

It’s the fifth significant piece of M&A in the registrar market in the last six months, following the sale of Go Daddy and Group NBT to private investors, Tucows’ acquisition of EPAG and NetSol’s move to Web.com

Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Indeed, there does not appear to have been an official announcement yet, beyond the KeyDrive home page.

The deal was first reported by DomainNameNews.

More details as they come in.

End in sight for Go Daddy’s 60-day transfer lock

Go Daddy’s unpopular 60-day domain name lockdown period, which prevents customers moving to other registrars, could be reduced to as little as five days under new ICANN policy.

ICANN’s GNSO Council this week voted to amend the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy, which is binding on all registrars, to clarify when and how a registrar is allowed to block a transfer.

Today, Go Daddy has a policy of preventing transfers for 60 days whenever the registrant’s name is changed in the Whois record.

It’s designed to help prevent domain name hijacking, but to many customers it’s frustrating and looks shady; as a result it’s one of the most frequently cited criticisms of the company.

Other registrars may have similar policies, but Go Daddy is the only one you ever really hear complaints about.

Some have even posited that the practice violates the IRTP, which explicitly prevents registrars spuriously locking domains when customers update their Whois.

But ICANN’s compliance department has disagreed with that interpretation, drawing a distinction between “Whois changes” (cannot block a transfer) and “registrant changes” (can block a transfer).

Essentially, if you change your name in a Whois record the domain can be locked by your registrar, but if you change other fields such as mailing address or phone number it cannot.

Go Daddy and other registrars would still be able prevent transfers under the revised policy, but they would have to remove the block within five days of a customer request.

This is how ICANN explains the changes:

Registrar may only impose a lock that would prohibit transfer of the domain name if it includes in its registration agreement the terms and conditions for imposing such lock and obtains express consent from the Registered Name Holder: and

Registrar must remove the “Registrar Lock” status within five (5) calendar days of the Registered Name Holder’s initial request, if the Registrar does not provide facilities for the Registered Name Holder to remove the “Registrar Lock” status

Registrars may have some freedom in how they implement the new policy. Unblocking could be as simple as checking a box in the user interface, or it could mean a phone call.

Go Daddy, which was an active participant in the IRTP review and says it supports the changes, supplied a statement from director of policy planning James Bladel:

In the coming months, Go Daddy is making a few changes to our policy for domains in which the registrant information has changed.

We believe this new procedure will continue to prevent hijacked domain names from being transferred away, while making the transfer experience more user-friendly for our customers.

The changes were approved unanimously by the GNSO Council at its meeting on Thursday.

Before they become binding on registrars, they will have to be approved by the ICANN board of directors too, and the soonest that could happen is at its February 16 meeting.

The changes are part of a package of IRTP revisions – more to come in the near future – that have been under discussion in the ICANN community since 2007. Seriously.

Key-Systems sued over brand protection trademark

Israeli domain name registrar Domain The Net Technologies has filed a preemptive lawsuit against German competitor Key-Systems over their respective brand management trademarks.

According to the complaint, Domain The Net filed for a US trademark on the term “BrandShield”, which it uses to market brand protection services at brandshield.com.

Key-Systems, which runs a similar service called BrandShelter, filed an opposition to Domain The Net’s trademark application last October, due to the alleged potential for confusion.

Anticipating a possible lawsuit, Domain The Net has therefore sued first, asking the District Court in Virginia to declare that BrandShield does not infringe the BrandShelter trademark.

The complaint lists several dozen live brand+word trademarks to demonstrate that no one company should have exclusive rights to the word “brand”.

You can view the complaint, which was filed yesterday, in PDF format here.

(Hat tip: @GeorgeKirikos)

Melbourne IT involved in 100+ gTLD applications

Melbourne IT says it has prepared applications for over 100 new generic top-level domains on behalf of clients including members of the Association of National Advertisers.

The registrar’s CEO, Theo Hnarakis, said in a press release:

Big brands from around the world have already engaged with Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services to help them apply for more than 100 new TLDs.

Big name companies in the financial sector, plus the retail and consumer goods industries have shown the most interest in applying so far, and roughly a quarter of the companies we are assisting are members of the Fortune Global 500. Applicants working with Melbourne IT also include members of the U.S. Association of National Advertisers.”

The company agrees with the emerging industry consensus which estimates 1,000 to 1,500 applications between Thursday and April 12, with roughly two-thirds of those “dot-brand” applications.

It’s an open industry secret that many companies ostensibly opposing the new gTLD program with the ANA are also preparing applications, but their level of enthusiasm is still open to question.

Anecdotally, many potential dot-brand applicants appear to be under the misapprehension that a new gTLD application is necessary to defend their brands from top-level cybersquatters, which is not the case.

Go Daddy gripe site relaunches with .co domain

Erstwhile Go Daddy gripe site No Daddy, formerly found at nodaddy.com, has been relaunched under new ownership at nodaddy.co.

The original site opened in 2007 as a place for customers to share “horror stories”, but was acquired by Go Daddy last July at around the same time it secured a reported $2.2 billion investment.

It’s still not entirely clear whether Go Daddy paid off the previous owners, or whether it was legal or other threats that caused the nodaddy.com domain to change hands.

The site once ranked second only to Go Daddy itself in Google search results for the company’s name.

The new site, NoDaddy.co, is unaffiliated with the previous owners.

The owner identifies himself as “AdverseVariable” and the domain is registered using a Whois privacy service offered by Bahamas-based registrar Internet.bs.

The new forum currently only has one post.