Domain Sales

Few Americans know that it is in fact illegal to to falsify personal details when registering a domain. With the enacting of the Truth in Domain Names Act in 2003, it became a crime to “knowingly and with the intent to defraud” provide false contact information to a domain registrar. …

The .info domain extension usually doesn’t fair well at auction, but today is an exception with the sale of BodyBuilding.info for £8,228 ($14,500 USD). Compare that to BodyBuilding.net, which only fetched £2,785 ($4,750 USD) in 2005. Clearly this is a sign that domains have become much more valuable over the …

In a rather interesting domain dispute, the Sutherland Institute, a right-wing think tank, accused the registrants of sutherlandinstitute.com of cybersquatting. The actual website of the institute is sutherlandinstitute.org. The respondents used the .com top-level domain to run an protest site they claimed was a parody of the real Sutherland Institute. …

The hard lessons of Sarah Palin’s now obsolete Twitter username learned, a senior member of the Alaska Republican Party has registered sarahpalin2012.com and sarahpalinforpresident.com. Ever since she became John McCain’s running mate in 2008, rumours have been circulating that she is considering a bid for the White House in 2012. …

Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette has been in his job since 1974. Running virtually uncontested each election year, he decided he could save a few bucks by not paying his registration fee, letting the domain expire, and picking it back up when it came time to run for office …

The Proctor and Gamble Company (PG), responsible for products such as Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, and Scope mouthwash, recently filed a domain dispute with Richard Jones, a man who registered scopemouthwash.com and used it for his search portal of miscellaneous advertisements available in multiple languages. PG owns pg.com as well …

The website owners of Hotels.com have been trying to get trademark status for the domain name for over year, but Friday The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the ruling of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to the court, the term “hotels” …

Out of toilet paper? Forget to buy dish soap? Don’t worry, Alice.com has you covered. After buying the domain for £152,434 ($250,000 USD) in 2008, entrepreneurs Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire recently launched the site, which sells consumables such as toothpaste and shampoo most Internet retail outlets won’t sell. The …

Less than three weeks after the sale of Rosary.com for £48,388, another Christian domain has sold. This time it’s Biblical.com for £10,347 ($17,000 USD). Old as it may be, the Bible is still a bestselling book, especially in the Midwest and southern United States. Online versions of the religious text …

In early June, we reported about the Public Interest Registry (PIR) and their plans to introduce new security to .org top-level domains (TLD). After a month of preparing, PIR is ready to move some 18 live domains to the security extensions for testing. The official launch of the new system, …