Issue 180 - 4th March 2005

Sale of $164 million domain portfolio

Internet marketing company Marchex Inc. recently acquired a portfolio of over 100,000 domain names, each displaying keyword advertising, for the considerable sum of $164.2 million. Marchex estimated that the portfolio, previously owned by Name Development Ltd., had more than 17 million unique visitors in November. The portfolio consists of 'intuitive' domain names, such as careerinfo.com, debts.com and rentguide.com - domains which Internet users might simply type into their browser when researching a particular area of interest - each with a web-page displaying pay-per-click advertising related to the domain name.

This comes a few weeks after the misspelled domain voyuer.com was auctioned off after expiry for $112,100.

These two separate incidents are further indicators of the increasing value of domain names.

UN panel to decide governance of Internet?

It was recently reported in the online press that a United Nations sponsored panel, set up in December 2003, plans to offer solutions for Internet crime and email spam by July of this year. The report suggested that governance of the Internet may be decided in November of this year at the, again UN sponsored, World Summit on the Information Society - apparently, developing countries would prefer an international body such as the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to be in control, rather than the independent non-profit organisation, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Relaxation of registration criteria for .si (Slovenia)

From 4th April of this year, .si will become available on a first-come, first-served basis. The domain has been available since July 2002, with various restrictions imposed.

The new requirements for registration will only be local presence and the following of some syntax rules (eg hyphens can not be used as the first or last characters of the domain).

Trademark holders who fulfil the current requirements should register their trademark domain before 31st March, in order to prevent someone else registering it. Go to www.netnames.com now, or if you are a Platinum Customer, contact your account manager.

Nestle finally acquire maggi.com

Food company Nestle have won the rights to maggi.com (Maggi being one of their brands) via a tribunal, after a previous case handled by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) back in 2001 had resulted in Nestle being accused of 'reverse domain hijacking'. The domain was originally registered by Romeo Maggi, who claimed his intention was to use the domain for a family website. WIPO believed that Nestle had been aware of this when they brought their complaint, but had deliberately omitted to mention it to the panel, instead portraying Maggi as a cybersquatter rather than an individual who had a legitimate claim to the domain and had not acted in bad faith.

In contrast, the recent Swiss tribunal determined that it was more likely that the average Internet user would expect to find Nestle products at this address than Mr Maggi's web-page.