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Name Administration Successfully Settles ChilliBeans.com Dispute After Legal Battle

Elliot Silver
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20

Frank Schilling

It’s very frustrating to see a generic / descriptive domain name taken away from a registrant via UDRP.  Not only is it unfair, but it also adds to the cost of doing business, as a UDRP defense has become a risk that needs to be factored into any domain investor’s business model.

Back in late 2008, Balglow  Finance, a Brazilian company operating a sunglasses business known as “Chilli Beans,”  filed a UDRP for the descriptive domain name, ChilliBeans.com. The domain name  was/is owned by Frank Schilling’s company,  Name Administration, Inc. When the three person NAF panel ruled against Name Administration in November of 2008, the company filed a lawsuit in its Grand Cayman jurisdiction in order to keep the domain name.

I was just informed that Name Administration has prevailed in its nearly two year legal effort to keep this domain name. According to a release I received this afternoon, the companies agreed that  “NAI’s use of the generic Chillibeans.com domain name violated no enforceable rights of Balglow Finance.”

Name Administration has agreed to transfer the domain name to Balglow for an undisclosed settlement. According to Schilling,  “while it’s unfortunate that this dispute necessitated a trip to the Cayman Court, we are most pleased to have resolved the matter in such a mutually beneficial way.”

As a result of owning such a stellar domain portfolio of generic/descriptive domain names, Name Administration has been a frequent target of UDRP filings. Some companies wrongly believe they have more rights to domain names than his company, although they are most often proven wrong by UDRP panels. When I spoke with Frank, he discussed his company’s history with UDRP filings.

“We’re never looking to pick fights over IP rights and have really tried hard to do the right things in the domain name business, for a very very long time, but we’ve won 17 UDRPs.   That should say a lot.  Large companies often want what you have and don’t want to pay for it.   They try to vilify you for making money with generic domain names, and the UDRP has created an unholy intimation that holding a generic name for profit is somehow bad.   Well it isn’t!   Everybody owns something –  and when people challenge our generic IP rights we will spend whatever it takes to make our point that anyone is free to register a generic name on a first-come first served basis.”

It’s good to see Name Administration prevail in this dispute. I hope other companies realize that filing a UDRP for a descriptive domain name may seem like a cost effective option at first blush, but it can lead to a costly and drawn out legal battle if they mess with the wrong company.

GOP Issues “Pledge to America” Launches PledgeToAmerica.com

Elliot Silver
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2

When the 2010 election votes are fully tallied, it appears that the Republican Party will have won the majority in the US House of Representatives, and the Democrats will retain the majority of the seats in the US Senate.

As Representative John Boehner gave a non-celebratory “victory” speech, the GOP’s A Pledge to America took center stage, literally, as the backdrop behind Rep. Boehner. Corresponding with the “Pledge” campaign, PledgeToAmerica.com was recently launched.

It appears that PledgeToAmerica.com expired in February of 2010, and it was then purchased again in May of 2010. It’s currently registered to a Steven Conn of Scottsdale, Arizona, who is also the registrant of the Mark It Media domain name (MarkIT Media Group is listed as the Pledge to America website designer).

Interestingly, the registrant chose not to register APledgeToAmerica.com (strange since the branding all includes “A” in front of “Pledge”). APledgeToAmerica.com was registered on September 17, 2010. This domain name currently resolves to a Godaddy landing page.

Google: “Our Algorithms Have Gotten Pretty Good at Recognizing Similar Content”

Elliot Silver
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25

There was an interesting new blog post on the Google Webmaster Tools blog yesterday discussing the issue of duplicate content and how Google doesn’t really look fondly upon websites that have the same information as other websites because of a poor user experience.

I hate taking large quotes from an article, but I think it’s important to know. Read the full post to get more information, but according to the blog post,

“Some less creative webmasters, or those short on time but with substantial resources on their hands, might be tempted to create a multitude of similar sites without necessarily adding unique information to any of these. From a user’s perspective, these sorts of repetitive sites can constitute a poor user experience when visible in search results. Luckily, over time our algorithms have gotten pretty good at recognizing similar content so as to serve users with a diverse range of information. We don’t recommend creating similar sites like that; it’s not a good use of your time and resources.”

This isn’t really new information, and it’s not surprising, but it’s something that domain owners need to take into consideration when developing their domain names. A lot of people have been asking about the issue of duplicate content lately, so this is certainly a good read.

Fred Mercaldo Resigns as President of Associated Cities

Elliot Silver
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19

I just received word that Fred Mercaldo has announced his resignation as President of Associated Cities, an organization made up of city .com domain names that produces the annual GeoDomain Expo.

Mercaldo issued a brief statement to me when I asked him about his resignation:

“I thought I could have a positive impact on the culture of the organization, and successfully mediate the legal disputes that continue between the founding members.  My goal was to reestablish AC as an asset to its great membership base.  While I thought I was making progress these last 5 months, I really wasn’t, and the time commitment that the position required was beginning to impact my responsibilities at our growing network of 65 City.com sites, and I could not allow that.”

I know Fred was an Associated Cities Board Member for a few years prior to taking on this role, and he spent much time representing the geodomain industry. As far as I am aware, this was an unpaid position, as was the board position.

Logo.com Acquired by Well Known Domain Investor / Entrepreneur

Elliot Silver
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24

As you’ve probably seen already last week, the domain name Logo.com was brokered by Sedo and sold for half a million US dollars to a buyer who has yet to be disclosed. According to an earlier version of the website on Logo.com (which has now changed),

Logo.com will provide graphic design and other services to small businesses and entrepenuers including logo design, website design, stationery design, printing and much more. Our website is launching in Q1 2011. We’re looking forward to serving you!

Adam & Alan, Co-Founders of Logo.com

If you’re wondering who Adam and Alan are, I can give you some insight. Once the DNS changed to IdealHosting.com, I was able to instantly recognize the buyer, a friend of mine.

Adam is Adam Strong, a well-known and widely respected domain investor who was a co-founder of domain name news website, DNN. Alan is Alan Townsend, who was head of eCommerce at Personal Creations, which was acquired by Provide Commerce, Inc., the parent company of ProFlowers, RedEnvelope, Cherry Moon Farms and Shari’s Berries.

The new company will offer logo and design services to small businesses and entrepreneurs. You can’t get much of a better domain name for this type of service than Logo.com – that’s for sure.  According to Adam,  “we’re in full-fledged development mode right now building out the platform and lining up patnerships. We’ve got some great designers already lined up but we’re always going to be looking for more.”

He indicated that some recent large sales to domain investors helped spur this investment. Adam notes, “with my good friends Richard Kirkendal and Richard Lau buying up category killer domains like DomainName.com and launching successful sites on Resume.com ,  I figured I had to ‘keep up with the Jones’ a bit .  . . haha.”

These two internet entrepreneurs have worked together in the past, which should help them work well together on Logo.com. According to Strong, “Alan and I have worked together on several large domain brokering deals over the years and we’ve always talked about doing something together on a killer domain. This domain came up, time and again. It was one we always thought would be a home run. ”

Congrats to Adam and Alan, and I wish them both all the best with this key domain name.

IDN Event Recap

Elliot Silver
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1

The first IDN Event was held last night in New York City, and the turnout was impressive. Around 40 domain investors attended the sushi dinner organized by Gary and Aaron, two prominent IDN investors and the duo behind  IDNTools.com and related websites.

Obviously, the networking aspect was one of the most important elements of the Event. Attendees came from as far as Israel, the UK, and Hong Kong, to as close as Manhattan, and there were a number of people from various cities throughout the US. It was a good mix of people, and I felt completely comfortable, despite not owning any IDN domain names yet.

I appreciated the fact that the Event was partly treated as an educational opportunity. Although I would guesstimate that 85% of the crowd was made up of people already investing in IDN domain names, there was time devoted to teaching attendees about IDNs and how they are used. The fact that it was educational and not a sales pitch made it all the more interesting to me.

Edmon Chung, the CEO of .Asia prepared an interesting presentation as did Patrick Carleton of Wyvern, LLC. Personally, I felt that the candid remarks of IDN investors Andrew Snow and Moshe Schneider (who recently bought Москва.com (Moscow in Russian Cyrillic)  for $216,000 were the most interesting. When you’re able to hear directly from people who have spent 7 figures in US dollars on a particular investment, it’s generally a good source of information.

I really believe IDN domain names are going to become more mainstream domain investments in the next couple of years. I have been doing my research and due diligence, and there some domain names in the coordinating Snapnames IDN auction that I am following. The auction ends on November 3 at 3:15pm EST.

I appreciate the effort that went into making this a success, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turn into an annual occurrence. Congrats to IDN Tools on this achievement.

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