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Dirty tricks claimed over .wine gTLD project

Kevin Murphy, February 7, 2012, Domain Registries

Jean Guillon, who has been openly working on an idea for a .wine generic top-level domain for the last few years, claims his erstwhile partner in the project has sold him out.
According to Guillon, he worked with an unnamed partner – apparently a big player which had committed to fund the application – for five months.
Guillon says he worked on critical strategic elements of his .wine plan, such as recruiting registrars and finding potential buyers for premium .wine domains worth “hundreds of thousand Euros”.
But because he never signed a contract, Guillon says this partner has now cut him loose and plans to apply for .wine without him, using the knowledge he provided.
He does not reveal the identity of the partner (I have my suspicions) other than to say “there is a very rich organization coming out on the market, with a lot of money to hammer down any competing applicant.”
In a blog post discussing his predicament, he also threatens to reveal his former partner’s strategy to apply for “dozens” of gTLDs.
Guillon says he didn’t sign anything. Presumably that includes an NDA.
Dirty tricks? Sour grapes?
With only one side of the story it’s difficult to say right now.

Donald Trump files UDRP on wine domains

Kevin Murphy, November 9, 2011, Domain Policy

Donald Trump, who recently got into the wine business, has filed cybersquatting complaints against the owners of trumpwine.com and trumpwines.com.
Both domains were first registered prior to Trump’s purchase of a Virginia vineyard in April this year, which appears to be the first time he was connected to wine.
The registrant of trumpwine.com has had it since 2008, while the owner of trumpwines.com evidently picked it up in February. It was previously owned by DirectNIC, after the original 2007 registration expired.
Both registrants appear to have some connection to the alcohol industry. That said, neither of the domains currently points to an active web site.