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Disputes News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga trademark application for the term ‘patentville’ prompts owner of domain name to launch website

Patentville

Zynga’s recent European trademark application for the term ‘patentville’ appears to have prompted the owner of the domain patentville.com to take notice.  On April 14, a day after my story ran on Domaining.com, the popular domain news aggregator, patentville.com went from a parked page at Sedo to an active website that is still in the very early stages of development.

According to the About Us page on its website, “We are working on bringing an idea information resource for you at PatentVille.com in the coming months.  Please email us at information at patentville.com and let us know if you would like to see us include a specific area related to inventions, patents and ideas.”

If for any reason Zynga thinks it’s going to have an easy time getting the domain name without plunking down some serious cash, there’s not much doubt the owner of patentville.com will stay on the offense.

As I pointed out in my previous story, the owner of patentville.com is Michael P. Eddy, a registered Patent attorney who knows a thing or two about trademarks, copyrights, patents and domain names.  His law office also offers services related to domain disputes. 

Plans for patentville by Zynga?

Zynga has not revealed any details or plans for patentville. 

Outside of this story and a trademark application in Europe, nothing else is known.

Categories
Disputes News

Scott Day’s Digimedia updates website, showcases generic domain names

digimedia

It’s been years since Digimedia has updated its website, but the company that was founded in 1997 by watermelon farmer Scott Day has a new look.

And the company not only has a new website, but also a new slogan to go with its longstanding slogan — “Developing places people want to go.”

“We Grow Crops.  The virtual kind, in particular”, is featured prominently near the top of the home page.  The word “crops” is well suited for Digimedia, which owns the domain name, crops.com.  A domain that a panel at the World Intellectual Property Organization ruled the company could keep, after Crop’s nv of Ooigem, Belgium filed a dispute to get the generic name.

The Portfolio page highlights many of the company’s category killer domain names, including:  bathingsuits.com, childcare.com, clinic.com, greatgifts.com, homeinterior.com, inventions.com, invoices.com, judo.com, moneymarket.com, nightlife.com, oklahoma.com, peoplefinder.com, prayer.com, recipes.com, shampoo.com, skier.com, society.com, and trips.com.

One of the more interesting additions to the website is the Partners page, which briefly discusses the company’s relationship with other businesses.  Though not featured in the Partners section, you may recall that last year, Scott Day made an equity investment in Royal Bobbles LLC, the company owned and operated by Warren Royal.  Royal Bobbles LLC runs bobbleheads.com.

Categories
News Video Games

MindJolt acquires Bill Kara’s Hallpass Media: What you may not know

Mindjolt Hallpass Media

Like many a domainer, I’ve been keeping up on Bill Kara and Hallpass Media since he made news by purchasing the domain name cookinggames.com for $350,000. 

Over the past year, his company has kept busy with a series of launches including cookinggames.com, virtualpets.com, dressup.com and others. 

Late yesterday I received news from Bill that his company Hallpass had been sold to MindJolt.  I had already stepped away from the computer when I got the e-mail.  By the time the story hit the news wire at the New York Times and TechCrunch, it didn’t take long for domain bloggers to pick up on the headlines with DomainGang being the first to run the story, followed by Mike Berkens over at The Domains.

Of course, the New York Times and TechCrunch failed to point out — as domain bloggers have not, that Hallpass Media is more than just an online gaming network, with the company’s developed properties come some of its other greater assets — like the people and of course, some of the world’s best untapped gaming domain names.

According to Bill (who currently lives in Canada), “Going forward, we plan to build out more of my former gaming domains which is going to be alot of fun having more resources at my disposal.  Plus I am relocating my family to LA… no more snow for me.”

Smart, strategic move by MindJolt.

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News

Six-figure domain name expires, lakehavasu.com is pending renewal or deletion

LakeHavasu.com

The screenshot you’re looking at is actually a screenshot of the lakehavasu.com home page, taken from 2008 and was captured by DomainTools Screenshot History.  Up until April 11, 2011, the domain name had been registered to a Brenda Thornburg. 

That’s all changed.

Today, lakehavasu.com is nothing more than a Network Solutions parked page – along with a message at the top that reads, “lakehavasu.com expired on 04/09/2011 and is pending renewal or deletion.”

And Brenda Thornburg (the original owner) is no longer listed as the registrant, “Pending Renewal or Deletion” is.

Lakehavasu.com Whois

At the time of this post, the domain name lakehavasu.com is up for auction at NameJet as a Pre-Release name. 

According to Valuate.com, lakehavasu.com appraises for $106,000.  

Readers, if lakehavasu.com makes it to auction without being renewed by its original owner, how much do you think it will sell for?

In 2007, lakehavasucity.com sold for over $12,000 on SnapNames.

[UPDATE Apr. 20th, 2011:  The original registrant has renewed the name, and as a result, the domain name will no longer head to auction at NameJet.]

Categories
News

Flippa’s biggest officially reported sale ever at $400,000, back up for sale at auction site

s9

s9.com which sold for a reported $400,000 in 2010 and became Flippa’s biggest-ever sale at the time, is back up for auction on the website/domain marketplace and drawing skeptical comments from users. 

“You have bought the website for more than 400K, and now the bid starts at 150K ?”, commented one user.

According to the seller, “The current owners have not had the time to develop this site.”

Now the site is back up for sale.

In November, Flippa officially announced that s9.com, an online biographical dictionary, had set a new sales record for the company.  s9, was one of many sales that the company claims helped it pass the $50MM sales mark in less than 2 years, according to a recent press release published on BusinessWire.

Anything and everything at Flippa

While there’s no reason to doubt the sale of s9.com ever took place in 2010, Flippa lists anything and everything that meets its reserve or buy-it-now price as a sale, even though it doesn’t act as an Escrow service.  As a result, it’s impossible to know whether both parties ever complete a deal.

s9’s seller isn’t hoping to take a loss on the website/domain.  Although the starting bid is set to start at $150,000, the buy-it-now price is $550,000. 

But s9 is no longer the biggest-ever sale for Flippa.  According to sales history and as reported by Domain blogger Morgan Linton, an established ClickBank webiste (URL hidden) sold for a reported $1,160,000 this past week.

However, the deal hasn’t been officially reported by Flippa as of yet.  As seen with previous high dollar sales, the company normally writes a post on its blog.