insurance – Internetblog.org.uk

Transamerica drops lawsuit against domain registrars

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:22:28 +0000

Domain registrants can be sued for cybersquatting, but are registrars liable as well? Until recently, life insurance company Transamerica thought so. The company was in the process of suing several prominent domain registrars for trademark infringement— all because several of their customers had registered domains containing Transamerica’s trademark. Thankfully, the insurance firm dropped the lawsuit today.

The idea of blaming a registrar for the actions of its customers is a bit ludicrous. How can you expect a company that handles thousands of transactions per day to screen each domain for possible trademarks? You can’t. It’s up to the trademark holder to enforce his or her mark, not a third party. Even if Transamerica had continued its suit, I doubt it would have won in court.

Insure.com sells for $16 million in record sale

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:14:45 +0000

News is out that the domain Insure.com has changed hands. The buyer, marketing firm QuinStreet, paid an astounding £10.1 million ($16 million USD). If you discount the fact that the sale also included Insure.com’s corporate name, the sale is the largest ever recorded– beating sex.com by $4 million.

Before the sale, Insure.com was a publicly traded company. The firm itself was not sold, however, and will be renamed to Life Quotes.

The domain originally sold for $1.6 million in 2001. It’s amazing how quickly the domain name market has taken off over the past several years. Given that Insure.com sold for 10 times its 2001 original purchase price, its value more than doubled every year up until now.

Photo | svilen001

BodyBuilding.info sells for £8,228

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:03:16 +0000

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 last four years.

A pair of French insurance domains, Assurancevie.com and Assurance-vie.com, also sold together for £53,024 ($87,000 USD). “Assurancevie” means “life insurance,” which makes sense considering they sold for an amount that could be a life savings for some.

Engagement-rings.co.uk sold for £7,000 ($11,486 USD). No doubt this was in part influenced by the recent sale of DiamondRings.com for £141,589.

Source: Domain Name Wire