Widget company loses UDRP arbitration for 128 domain names.

PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and his internet widget company Slide have lost a UDRP decision to obtain the domain SlideTV.com and 127 other associated domain names.

Slide has raised over $50 million to date, and the last round was rumored to have been raised at a valuation north of $500 million. The company provides widgets for use on sites such as Facebook, and some of these widgets include video.

The company inquired about buying the domain SlideTV.com from the owner, who declined. The owner then registered the remaining 127 domains in the dispute, including myslidetv.com, slidetvafrica.com, slidetvamerica.com, and slidetvwine.com.

The one person panel determined that SlideTV.com and its variants are not confusingly similar to the company’s Slide mark. Although the panelist didn’t consider legitimate interest in the domain and bad faith registration, he did write:

I find that the domain names at issue are not identical or confusingly to Complainant’s SLIDE mark and, in any event, Respondent’s January 16, 2006 registration of slidetv .com predates Complainant’s date of first use in commerce of its registered SLIDE mark. Respondent’s subsequent registration of 127 more “slidetv” variant marks after contact with Complainant to discuss purchase of the slidetv .com>domain name cannot be deemed bad faith registrations because Respondent had the right to expand on his original registration which trumped Complainant’s use in time.

Tags: max levchin, National Arbitration Forum, slide, udrp

Major League Baseball continues aggressive campaign for team names.

Major League Baseball and the San Francisco Giants want to to get their hands on GiantsBaseball.com. The domain is owned by a Carmel, California man and was registered in 1999, and is subject to arbitration at National Arbitration Forum commenced on August 15.

Although the Giants aren’t playing as well as its neighbors the Los Angeles Angels, it should have better luck obtaining this domain than the Angels had going after Angels.com.

The DomainSponsor parking page for GiantsBaseball.com currently shows ads for “San Francisco Giants”, “Giants Tickets”, and “Giants Schedule”.

The Angels organization lost its battle for the generic domain Angels.com for a number of reasons. The owner of the domain, who lived in Korea, was unaware that the parked domain at Angels.com was showing ads related to baseball because of geo targeting on the domain. The domain showed baseball terms to U.S. visitors but not to him when he visited the site from Korea. Also, the owner registered a trademark in Korea for “Angels” prior to arbitration. And then there’s the issue of “Angels” being a generic term.

While Angels.com was clearly a case of overreaching by the Angels team, I doubt the Giants will have any trouble winning this challenge. Now if only they could win a game or two on the field.

Incidentally, Giants.com is owned by the NFL New York Giants football team.

Tags: l.a. angels, major league baseball, National Arbitration Forum, san francisco giants, udrp

Three character domain name leads sales chart for Sedo this week.

Domain brokerage Sedo has sold JTR.com for 60,000 EUR, or about $90,000. This is a solid three character domain name with many acronyms.

Sedo also concluded a good Great Domains sale, Doctor.net for 21,760 EUR.

These two sales were in Euros, which has been falling dramatically compared to the dollar over the past month. Of course, the Euro is still about 50% more valuable compared to the dollar than it was shortly after it was introduced. The weak dollar has helped non-U.S. domain buyers snap up domains names at “lower” prices than before. It will be interesting to see what effects a rising dollar will have, although this sudden surge in the dollar may be short lived.

Here are other notable sales from Sedo this week:

jtr.com 60,000 EUR
moebel.com 27,432 USD
thoughtleaders.com 20,000 EUR
yougames.com 18,000 USD
loseit.com 10,000 EUR
netpartner.com 10,000 EUR
taux.com 10,000 USD
fixedprice.com 10,000 EUR
bandtees.com 10,000 EUR
reverie.com 9,500 EUR
wja.com GreatDomains 8,000 EUR
amatrice.com 5,500 USD
designsupport.com 5,250 EUR
naln.com 5,000 EUR
jeuxcasino.com 5,000 EUR
private-krankenversicherung.com 5,000 USD Private health insurance in German
towns.tv 10,000 USD
jobcheck.de 9,900 USD
worldtourism.co.uk 8,000 EUR
convert.net 4,700 EUR

Moebel is the name of a furniture company. ThoughtLeaders.com is a good name but a very good price for the seller too. Also notice Towns.tv, a very good .tv sale.

Tags: sedo

Domain sold at previous TRAFFIC auction on the block at Bido , Bido Chat in the works.

Bido’s auction on Wednesday will be for FixedLoans.com. This will be an interesting auction to watch because the domain was sold at a TRAFFIC conference in 2006 for $10,000.

Some may view this auction as a test of Bido’s clout in the domain auction business, but it could really go either way. If it sells for more than $10,000 it could be because fixed loans are getting a lot more attention now than two years ago, or it could be because Bido delivered good buyers. If it sells for less than $10,000, it could be because the domain market is softening.

The domain was mentioned in David Kesmodel’s The Domain Game book.

The auction will start at 1PM EDT Wednesday and last for one hour.

In other Bido news, it appears that a chat feature is in the works. Sahar Sarid’s Facebook profile has an update on Tuesday that reads “Sahar Sarid is testing Bido.com’s new feature: Chat!”. It’s not clear yet how this will be implemented, but Bido is doing a good job pulling together a community around domain auctions. (Thanks to a reader for the tip.)

Tags: bido, David Kesmodel, Sahar sarid, The Domain Game, traffic conference

Oversee cuts 10%; domain companies need to tighten the ship.

It’s never fun when companies lay off staff. The first company I worked for out of college called a Saturday meeting to lay off 33% of the company. Worse, I was on the finance team that had to figure out how much fat to cut.

The news today that Oversee.net cut 10% of its staff isn’t a big surprise to me for a number of reasons:

1. The company acquired Moniker and SnapNames . There are overlapping roles there that were planned for consolidation in the financial models that made those deals profitable.

2. The company took on $150 million in investment and investors always want lean operations.

3. The domain parking business, a large part of Oversee.net through DomainSponsor , is in the tank.

4. The company really got soaked on SnapNames since it lost Network Solutions and Enom.

What’s the next shoe to drop? I think it’s sponsorship of conferences. For a long time domain companies haven’t calculated the ROI of plunking down cash for a booth or sponsorship or sending 10 people to the show. I’ve talked to the heads of a couple sponsors of conferences who say “yeah, it’s not worth it anymore”. They used to get a lot of people to sign up for their services at these shows, but now everyone knows about them. They get very few sign-ups. It may be worthwhile for companies new to the scene, but not very important to other companies.

The excesses of domain parking have made it such that companies haven’t thought twice about dropping $10k on a party or $25k on a sponsorship. But that will change.

The companies that will weather the storm are the ones that diversify and run themselves like real businesses. Don’t look at Oversee.net’s cuts as a sign of weakness; look at it as a sign of strength.

Tags: domainsponsor, Moniker, Oversee.net, SnapNames