Month: June 2011

Categories
Disputes National Arbitration Forum

Google wins dispute over social product domain name googleplusone.com

Google +1

A panelist with the National Arbitration Forum ruled in favor of Google Inc in the company’s dispute over the domain name googleplusone.com, a name that describes its new social product Google +1 which is trying to compete with Facebook’s “Like” button.

Google filed the complaint against Seshchand Atluri on May 2, 2011 and made three assertions: the domain was confusingly similar to Google’s mark, that the respondent had no rights or legitimate interests to the domain, and that it was registered in bad faith.

The National Arbitration Forum found that the registrant Seshchand Atluri, registered the disputed domain name on May 8, 2008 and that the domain name resolved to a parked website where profits were presumably being made.

Having established all three elements required under the ICANN Policy, the Panelist Ralph Yachnin concluded the domain name should be transferred to Google Inc.

The details of the case can be read here.

Categories
News

Heating up: 3D.com negotiations

3D.com

Months after securing the rights to sell the domain name 3D.com, Sedo broker Ryan Colby is reporting (via Twitter) that negotiations are heating up.

As I reported back in November 2010 on the history of 3D domain sales, some of the top publicly reported sales took place in 2010, with the sale of 3Dtv.co.uk leading the charts at $22,650 in March 2010. 

The current sales record belongs to 3Dprinting.com which sold for $25,500 EURO in early 2011, however the sale of 3D.com should easily shatter that mark.

Categories
Disputes News

Will Microsoft broker a deal for the domain name Halo4.com?

HALO 4

Microsoft will be releasing Halo 4 at the end of 2012, as reported by a number of sources including ars technica. 

“It’s official. As expected, at this morning’s E3 keynote, Microsoft revealed both Halo 4 and an enhanced remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 4 will be the start of an all-new trilogy and will launch on the 360 at the end of next year. And unlike some of the more recent entries in the franchise, it stars none other than Master Chief.”

Once again though, Microsoft doesn’t own the domain name for an upcoming title.  In this case, Halo4.com.  The unidentified owner has put up the name for sale at Sedo with an asking price of $10,000.

Halo domain names

Halo4.com isn’t the only domain related to the Halo franchise Microsoft doesn’t own.  The company also doesn’t own Halo.com or Halo1.com.

The company does own Halo2.com and Halo3.com.  Both Halo2.com and Halo3.com were acquired by Microsoft on April 27, 2004.  Halo2.com switched straight over to Microsoft Corporation, while Halo3.com was put in Microsoft’s broker’s name Trout & Zimmer, before switching over to Microsoft Corporation nearly two years later on February 23, 2006, according to DomainTools.  

In 2010 Microsoft launched Halo Reach without owning the domain, a name it still doesn’t own.  However, it did finally acquire Kinect.com. 

Readers:  What do you think?  Will Microsoft purchase the name for $10,000 via Sedo from its current owner, acquire the name through other means like a domain  dispute, or simply do nothing?

Categories
Disputes Movies News Trademarks

Updates on Top 5 Fusible stories, May

US Navy SEALs coming out of the water

In May 2011, the United States Navy SEALs drew a lot of news coverage on the web following the killing of Osama bin Laden.  But the SEALs weren’t the only story on Fusible that attracted readers.  

Zynga hinted at plans of developing the next top iPhone game with the registration of hangmanwithfriends.com, the Navy won the battle over the SEAL Team 6 trademark and filed its own marks, Sony Pictures got rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden, former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley sold The Inquisitr on Flippa for $330,000, and UberMedia gave up its domain claim on Twitteripad.com.

Hangman with Friends– There hasn’t been any news regarding Zynga’s plans for “Hangman with Friends”, other than the company registering the domain name hangmanwithfriends.com.  Considering one of the first word games kids learn to play is hangman, you can bet if Zynga does launch a hangman game on the iPad or iPhone, it could very well be the next top ranking iOS game.   

UberMedia and Twitter– After my story about UberMedia purchasing the domain name twitteripad.com was posted, the company deleted the domain from its portfolio.  The good news: the company avoided another possible trademark dispute with Twitter like the one it encountered over UberTwitter.  The bad news: someone in China registered the domain and is now redirecting users to a fake Apple survey page.  These types of websites often lead to scams or other problems for people, like computer viruses.  Either way, it looks like UberMedia made a smart play by dropping the name.  The company just raised another $5.6 million and its entire business revolves around Twitter.

The Inquistr — The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com) founded by former TechCrunch writer and b5media co-founder Duncan Riley in May 2008, sold for $330,000 USD on Flippa.   Two days after my story was published, The Inquisitr ran its own story “Duncan dishes on Inquisitr sale, future plans” that said the sale was complete and the site had changed hands.  “With everything said and done, Duncan has disclosed some facts and figures about the sale of the site. Final sale price was 10% over the reserve of $300,000, at $330,000. Keeping in with the threes trend, it went for 30x the monthly net after writers’ expenses” wrote Kim LaCapria. 

Navy’s SEAL Team trademark battle — I was the first to report (before any other news site or blog) that the Department of Navy filed a trademark for “SEAL Team” following Disney’s trademark filings on SEAL Team 6.  The story got immediately picked up by MediaPost who attributed their story here, but other major media outlets that reported on the news shortly thereafter, failed to give credit.  It can be frustrating as a blogger to see so many news sites and blogs not attribute the sources of their articles.  Ultimately, Disney abandoned their trademark filings.

Sony Pictures — Deadline.com reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment acquired the rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden.  Originally called “killing bin laden”, Kathryn Bigelow had apparently decided to change the film’s title.  Regardless, Sony Pictures registered nearly a dozen domain names including thekillingofbinladenmovie.com.  As of today, the film remains untitled, but the domain names have started forwarding to sonypictures.com.

Categories
News Video Games

EmpiresandAllies.com domain starts redirecting to Zynga’s Facebook game

Empires & Allies

I was thinking Zynga had missed another domain name opportunity with their newest combat strategy game Empires and Allies, but I guess I was wrong. 

Shortly after I published my story about the company announcing the launch of the game without the domain, the web address empiresandallies.com started redirecting to its page on Facebook.

Instead of establising a dedicated website like it has with Farmville.com and MafiaWars.com, it looks like the official home page for the game will be on Facebook. 

Search Engines

Others are looking to cash in by developing related keyword domains into websites and newsletters that offer tips and updates on the strategy game.  Empiresandalliesguide.info and empirealliesguide.com both rank on the first page of Google search engine results for the phrase “Empires & Allies”. 

Surprisingly, both domains were registered months ago in November 2010.

The owner of empirealliesguide.com was creating a history guide of sorts according to the first post, but that’s now changed with the launch of Zynga’s game.  The owner writes in his latest post, “Empires and Allies from Zynga has finally been released, and I’ve been playing it pretty much non-stop since the minute it came out (only with occasional bathroom breaks).  I’ve decided to start a FREE newsletter that will share tips and strategies for the game, as well as updates and notifications of any new guides that are released.”

The webmaster for empiresandalliesguide.info appears to have known about the Zynga game for awhile, but even without any official news put out by Zynga, the webmaster continued to post articles to ensure the site ranked well in the event the game did lauch.  It seems to have paid off, as the site ranks in the #1 spot even above the official Facebook page.