When I was attending NamesCon, I received an email from Sedo announcing the release of the 2020 Global Domain Report in collaboration with InterNetX, an advertiser here. I did not have a chance to read the report while I was away, but I read it last night. The free report “includes insights into the status quo of the domain industry, along with the latest developments, tendencies and trends of the global domain market and provides a view on potential market and business opportunities.”
Uniregistry shared its weekly domain name sales report, and the company announced it brokered the sale of BTI.com for $100,000. The deal was co-brokered between Uniregistry and DomainBooth.com, the brokerage operated by James Booth. The domain was acquired by James Booth in September of 2019 for an undisclosed amount of money:
Todays Acquisition – https://t.co/idjzd2mgnh
— James Booth (@DomainBooth) September 2, 2019
Nordic Domain Days will be celebrating its fifth anniversary at its 2020 conference which is scheduled for September 7-8, 2020. The event will be held in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2019, the event was held in November, so I believe that means there should be warmer weather expected and more hours of daylight this year.
Nordic Domain Days 2020 has been announced! The conference is going back to Stockholm on September 7th to 8th! Check out “save the dates” newsletter at https://t.co/vToeVmhJM5 and sign up for the next one on our website https://t.co/lKemNxApN4 #ndd20 pic.twitter.com/r7CYPUjhS4
— Nordic Domain Days (@nordicdomain) February 12, 2020
Giuseppe Graziano of GGRG brokerage published the LXDO quarterly report covering the short (liquid) domain name market in the last quarter. According to the LXDO website, “The objective of the report is to present key statistics and generate a debate amongst the industry stakeholders about the fair value of such domains.” The LXDO report is created with the help of Escrow.com and Intelium.
The report covers 614,928 .com domain names, including 2 – 4 letter .com domain names, 2-5 number .com domain names, and 2-3 character (letter + number combos) .com domain names.
A UDRP was recently filed against the valuable 3 letter .com domain name, UAX.com. The UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the decision was published this morning. The panel found in favor of the domain name registrant, and also found that this was a case of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH).
Not only do I think this was the right decision, but I also think there is some helpful language for domain investors that can be referenced in a future UDRP defense or to head off a UDRP filing.
Verisign submitted a letter (pdf) to ICANN in response to the comments regarding the proposed amendment #3 of the .com registry contract. I want to highlight one aspect of the letter I found notable. In providing an example of domain name speculator activity, Verisign wrote:
“As a recent example, moments before the World Health Organization announced the official name of the coronavirus, Namecheap registered the name (covid-19.com) to a domain name speculator, presumably unassociated with the public health mission of the WHO.”
