Domain Sales

Candy.com has been sold by domainer Rick Schwartz to Melville Candy Company for £1.8 million ($3 million USD), an announcement on the seller’s blog stated yesterday. Melville Candy Company, a small Massachusetts confectioner, will use the domain to as a retail outlet for candy owned by a new company, G&J …

Former Vice President Al Gore joined forces with Vint Cerf today to publicly support ICANN, which is set to appear before Congress tomorrow for a hearing to determine its future relationship with the United States government. Vint Cerf is widely considered to be the father of the Internet and is …

In April, former U.S. President Bill Clinton filed a formal complaint with the National Arbitation Forum, the organization responsible for hearing domain name disputes under ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (often known as UDRP). Clinton’s complaint contended that The Name It Corporation had violated his trademark by registering williamclinton.com, …

The Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit organization responsible for managing .org top-level domains (TLD), will announce today that it is adopting DNS security extensions called DNSSEC. Domain Name System Security Extensions is a set of extensions that helps domain name systems (DNS) verify the integrity and security of data. …

Technology company Demand Media has been granted a patent for a tiered domain registration scheme. The system would allow the customer to purchase a domain at one of several tiers. The idea is to offer discounts to those who may not need the full functionality and features of a typical …

ICANN made quite a few policy updates last month. Most of it was just talk, with the non-profit saying they were going to explore “this and that,” or set up a committee to consider x and y. Either way, it’s nice to know that the folks in California are at …

Osram GmbH became the first person to file a UDRP (Uniform Domain Resolution Policy) dispute with the .tel registry this week in an attempt to get the domain osram.tel. The domain is owned by Russian Yuri A Ivanov and was registered on March 24, 2009. The UDRP was set up …

Susan Boyle literally became a star overnight last month with her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent. After her debut, Boyle became an Internet sensation. Hundreds of thousands watched her on YouTube. “Susan Boyle” was the second most-searched term in April, bested only by “swine flu.” …

The previously announced one-week auction at GreatDomains ended today. The low expectations I had for the auction turned out to be correct. While a few names did sell, the majority didn’t reach their reserve price. There’s no doubt that the sellers wanted exorbitantly high prices for their domains after they …

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ordered an individual in India, Herit Shah, to turn over the rights of his domain name “googblog.com” to Google. The search engine and cloud computing giant had filed a complaint against Shah for holding a domain that infringes on the Google and Blogger trademarks, …