“Super Lawyers” not famous enough to win gripe site UDRP fights

Three lawyers have failed to win cybersquatting complaints against a blogger who registered domains matching their personal names in order to criticize them.
Gregg Mashberg, Allen Fagin and Joseph Leccese, all attorneys with the international law firm Proskauer Rose, have lost three separate UDRP complaints recently.
Self-professed “investigative blogger” Crystal Cox registered josephleccese.com, allenfagin.com and greggmashberg.com last October, in order to publish a handful of unreadable and potentially defamatory blog posts alleging various forms of criminality.
The three men do not hold registered trademarks matching their names, so were forced to rely upon various awards they have won and media appearances they have made to show common law rights.
All three have apparently been named “Super Lawyers” by something called New York Super Lawyers, for example.
But the three-person WIPO panel which heard all three cases found, in virtually identical decisions, that the lawyers had failed to acquire common law trademark rights to their names.
The decisions read:

The record before the Panel suggests that Complainant is a highly respected, prominent lawyer who is a partner with a major law firm. There is insufficient evidence here that Complainant markets or provides services independently of the Proskauer law firm. Rather, it appears that the Proskauer firm is the platform on which Complainant provides his legal services.

It’s not unusual for a celebrity or public figure to win a UDRP complaint on the basis of their fame, but it appears in this case that the complainants were just not famous enough.

Comment Tagged: proskauer rose, udrp, wipo

Russian firm fined millions over domain land-grab

RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar, will have to repay 240 million rubles ($8.6 million) for grabbing thousands of domain names and auctioning them during the .РФ landrush.
The company could also be fined up to 75% of its 2009 revenues for breaking competition law, according to a statement from the country’s Federal Antimonopoly Service.
When .РФ was launched by the .ru registry launched last November, it offered domain names on a first-come first-served basis, without the premium landrush period offered by other TLDs.
RU-Center took this opportunity to register 60,000 domains in its own name and sell them off to the highest bidder, essentially bringing the landrush to the registrar level.
Some ccTLD Coordination Center council members, responsible for setting the launch policies, had ownership interests in RU-Center either directly or through family members, according to FAS.
The registrar is currently being acquired by a company called RBC.

1 Comment Tagged: .РФ, cctld coordination center, fas, gaming, ICANN, idns, landrush, new TLDs, ru-center

Shakeup at Go Daddy

Go Daddy has a new boss and new ownership following a deal reportedly worth $2.25 billion.
For the first time in its 14-year history, Bob Parsons will be neither the majority shareholder nor the CEO.
It appears that seasoned technology investment firms KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures will own, between them, more than half of the domain name registrar.
Very little about the “partnership” was disclosed, including the financial terms. Various media sources valued the deal at $2.25 billion.
It was left to Domain Name Wire to uncover the news that Parsons will actually step aside as CEO to allow COO Warren Adelman to take over.
Parsons will become executive chairman.
A Go Daddy spokesperson said: “Mr. Parsons has said he will be very active in the business, especially in the areas he is most interested, such as marketing.”
She added that “very little will change”.
The spokesperson confirmed that after the deal closes Parsons will no longer be the majority shareholder. He currently owns 78% of Go Daddy, with the remaining 22% allocated to employee stock options.
As DNW reported, 36 employees will cash out for over $1 million each.
I wonder if we’ll see a mini wave of new domain name companies springing up in the Scottsdale area, as a result of newly minted Go Daddy millionaires leaving to launch their own start-ups.

Comment Tagged: go daddy, kkr, silverlake partners, technology crossover ventures

Go Daddy gripe site to shut down

NoDaddy.com, a gripe site dedicated to discussing customer and employee grievances with Go Daddy, is to be shut down by its administrators.
The shutdown coincides with an ownership shakeup at the registrar, which will see Warren Adelman take over as CEO and three big new investors come on board.
NoDaddy administrator “Rohan” wrote:

What started to document the improper suspension of SecLists.Org grew to cover dozens of other GoDaddy scandals including shill bidding on their own domain auctions, improperly blocking users from transferring domains to other registrars, sexual harassment, constant objectification of women, killing elephants for promotional purposes, etc. We’re hopeful that GoDaddy’s new owners will stop these shenanigans.
While our opinions of GoDaddy haven’t changed, we (NoDaddy admins) have decided to move on to focus on our other pursuits. Accordingly, we’ll be shutting down the main site and the forums on July 8. The site had a great run, and we appreciate your participation over the last 4 years!

In recent months, the vast majority of the posts on the forum have been made by a single disgruntled former Go Daddy employee who is currently suing the company for alleged “wage theft”.
The thread about the class action rambles on to some 147 pages and over 2,100 posts, most of which were made by this individual, going by the handle EmployeeClassAction.
Unsurprisingly, this user suspects the administrators were paid off.

4 Comments Tagged: go daddy, nodaddy

DirecTV wins first-ever .so UDRP

The recently relaunched .so top-level domain has seen its first UDRP case. DirecTV, the American satellite TV provider, won its complaint over the domain directv.so.
As you might imagine, it was found by WIPO to be a slam-dunk case of cybersquatting, with the respondent not even bothering to respond.
The domain was registered April 1, the first day .SO Registry opened its doors to general availability.
The registrant merely parked the domain with his registrar, which is enough nowadays to show commercial use and thus bad faith.
It will be interesting to see how badly .so is cybersquatted. It was not a particularly high-profile launch, and it lacks the attractiveness of, say, .co, so I expect we won’t see a great many UDRP cases filed.
.SO Registry, which has GMO Registry as its back-end provider, had pretty much the same trademark protection mechanisms built-in as .co, and used some of the same counsel to create them.
.so is the ccTLD for Somalia.

Comment Tagged: .so, .so registry, directv

Beckstrom gets his bonus again

ICANN president and CEO Rod Beckstrom has been awarded a performance-related bonus for the 12-month period ending today, it has emerged.
The undisclosed amount was approved by the ICANN board of directors during an unannounced meeting last Saturday.
As it is classed as a personal personnel matter, the portion of his “at risk component” approved was not revealed, but it is known that Beckstrom’s annual bonus is capped at $195,000.
His base salary is $750,000.
It’s the second consecutive year that he has received some part of his bonus. For the year ended June 30, 2010, the board voted it through in December.
As Beckstrom enters the third year of his three-year contract, it’s understood that he has already been making overtures to the board to extend his tenure for a second term.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, rod beckstrom

Blacknight warns about new gTLD “false promises”

Domain name registrar Blacknight Solutions has warned domain buyers not to be “duped” by registrars offering preregistration in new top-level domains that have not yet been approved.
“Every time an end user gets duped it hurts our industry and companies like us have to clean up the mess,” managing director Michele Neylon said.
In a press release, Blacknight said:

After receiving several queries from customers, Blacknight discovered that registrants interested in acquiring domains in rumoured new gTLDs had become confused by these offers, as they are not familiar with how the new TLD implementation might work. This sort of speculative offer is the equivalent of taking a down payment on a concept car that has not been approved for production. It is a false promise.

While the company was diplomatic enough to avoid naming names, I strongly suspect the release refers primarily to United Domains, which has been offering preregistration for the last few months.
UD currently offers such services for dozens of non-existent TLDs, such as (without leaving the B’s) .bank .bayern .bcn .berlin .bike and .board.
Given that none of the 50-odd potential gTLD applicants listed have revealed what their registration policies will be, it seems possible that many wannabe registrants will be left disappointed.
Don’t expect to be able to get a .bank domain via preregistration.
UD’s preregistering process looks a lot like a regular shopping cart, albeit with $0 pricing and no requirement to submit credit card details.
There is a FAQ that, if you read it, explains that there can be no guarantee you’ll get the names you ask for.
These services, and others like it, are basically ways to build up mailing lists of interested buyers, in order to contact them when domains actually start becoming available.
The registrar has already been burned by a couple of gTLD applicants.
LACNIC sent UD a nastygram in April, for example, when it discovered the registrar was offering preregistration in .lac.
Bizarrely, UD was at one stage accepting preregistration in .brand gTLDs in which literally no third party will qualify to buy a domain, such as .unicef.
ICANN has not to my recollection publicly stated a position on preregistration since 2000, when it said that “the practice of pre-registration should not be encouraged”.

6 Comments Tagged: blacknight, ICANN, new TLDs, preregistration, united domains

Neustar prices .brands at $10k

Neustar has unveiled extremely aggressive entry-level pricing for “.brand” applicants looking for a registry services provider – just $10,000 a year.
For the size of company expected to apply for .brands, that’s a rounding error. It may as well be free.
It’s called the Brand Assurance Package.
Applicants should not expect much for the money though – the package seems to be targeted at those that want to grab a .brand TLD in the first round, but may not do much at the second level initially.
It basically looks like a defensive registration package.
It covers application support and the registry infrastructure, but Neustar plans to ask clients to upgrade to more expensive services should they expand their .brand strategy in future.
Prices for those services have not been announced, but it would be a good idea to find out what they are before signing up – migrating a TLD between registries may not be trivial.
The fee does not cover ICANN’s application fees, which start at $185,000, of course.
There’s a market for this kind of thing. You need only read some of the marketing trade press to discover that there are a heck of a lot of brand managers scratching their heads about new gTLDs right now.
Many are taking a “wait and see” approach.
The problem with that strategy is that after April 12 next year we have no idea when – or, frankly, if – companies will next get their chance to apply for a new gTLD.
If Coca-Cola gets .coke in round one and .brands turn out to be a success, that could put Pepsi at a competitive disadvantage if it is left stranded in .com space, for example.
In addition, if you share your brand with a company in another vertical, applying in the first round is a must-have, unless you fancy your chances with ICANN’s untested objections procedures.

2 Comments Tagged: .brand, brand assurance program, ICANN, neustar, new TLDs

US extends ICANN’s IANA contract

ICANN has received a six-month extension to its crucial IANA contract, apparently in order to give the US government more time to take public comments and make amendments.
The contract may have been extended some weeks ago, but I believe the first public acknowledgment from ICANN came in a presentation before the ccNSO at its meeting in Singapore last week.
The IANA contract is what gives ICANN the power to make changes to the DNS root – including adding new top-level domains to the internet.
It is granted by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
The contract is now set to expire March 31, 2012, towards the end of the newly approved first-round new gTLDs application window, which is expected to be open from January 12 until April 12.
It would be helpful, from an applicant confidence perspective, if the contract is renewed on a longer-term basis before January 12, when money will start changing hands.
The NTIA currently has a Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf) open, soliciting public comments on what terms should and should not be included in the contract.
Quite a few civil liberty types are annoyed about the fact that the NTIA has added a clause that may enable it to block new gTLDs from the root if governments find them disagreeable.

Comment Tagged: iana, ICANN, new TLDs, ntia

.xxx domains to get free virus scans from McAfee

ICM Registry has signed up with security software outfit McAfee to provide automatic virus scanning for all web sites hosted at .xxx domain names.
Under the $8 million deal, “every .XXX domain will be scanned for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, browser exploits and phishing sites, reputational analysis and malware”, ICM said in a press release.
The subscription, which is based on the McAfee Secure offering, will be included in the price of the domain, which is expected to start at around $75 at the cheapest registrars.
McAfee normally charges a lot more than that; ICM has basically negotiated a bulk discount for its customers.
There are two ways to take advantage of the deal.
First, webmasters can choose to put some code on their sites that displays the McAfee Secure logo, potentially increasing customer confidence and ergo sales.
McAfee reckons sales can go up by as much as 12% when sites use this “trust mark”, based on some split-testing it did a couple years ago (results may vary, it adds).
Second, because McAfee is going to automatically scan every .xxx domain every day, whether the registrant wants it or not, porn surfers will be able to use McAfee SiteAdvisor, a free browser plug-in, to verify that a .xxx site is, for want of a better word, clean.
Whether you like .xxx or not, you’ve got to admit that this probably counts as a rare example of “innovation” from a domain registry.
On the flipside, registrars that already offer such services as add-ons, such as Go Daddy, won’t get the up-sell if ICM is giving it to every registrant from the registry side.
But that doesn’t seem to have stopped any registrars from signing up to sell .xxx domains.
Oddly, the press release does not name McAfee as the service provider, but its brand is all over the ICM web site so embarrassment is probably not a factor.
McAfee currently has about 80,000 sites using the service, which could easily grow to 500,000 or more if ICM gets as many registrations as it expects to.

Comment Tagged: icm registry, mcafee, security, xxx