Via the Guardian:

News Corporation-owned MySpace has won the right to use the MySpace.co.uk domain name, although another company had registered the domain back in 1997, six years before the launch of the MySpace network.

“This dispute resolution service decision is counter-intuitive at first sight and serves as a warning that domain registrations are not guaranteed and need to be secured by pro-active management as well as a clear understanding of the dynamic nature of the industry,” said Jonathan Robinson, the chief operating officer at web services company NetNames.

The domain was initially used for an email service, but the registrant later decided to park the domain when it started to receive tons of traffic. It was therefore decided that the registrant tried to profit from the popularity of MySpace’s brand by forwarding it to a parked page with advertisements. Unfortunately, the targeted ads also included text links to social networks, including paid links to MySpace.com.

[The registrant] said that the choice of ads that run on the myspace.co.uk website are determined by algorithms linked to search terms by internet users, which in recent years have been dominated by people looking for MySpace.

Gold, the arbitrator, said that it was not relevant that [the registrant] did not select the specific ads. Because it owned the website it was responsible for those ads and income made off the back of MySpace.

This is a dangerous ruling, in my opinion. First, the domain was registered before the launch of MySpace’s service and before the registration of their trademark. Secondly, the owner of a domain can usually not actively control the content displayed on parked pages. Thirdly, the popularity of MySpace would have cost the registrant money because of increasing traffic and bandwidth costs if he had continued to operate the email service under the domain. He would arguably have lost money from that additional traffic caused by Myspace had he not decided to park it instead.

What’s the lesson learned? Double-check the content and advertisements on any of your domains that might be trademark-sensitive, even if the trademark has been registered and established a long time after you bought the domain, because otherwise you’d be risking the loss of your domain name due to using it in “bad faith”.

Jeff Behrendt of DomainBits.com has written an in-depth guide about IDNs. Excerpt follows:

How does becoming wealthier than Frank Schilling sound? Schilling, the most successful individual domainer in the world, has a portfolio of about 300,000 names, estimated revenue of $20 million dollars per year, and has received several 9-figures offers for his portfolio. Yet according to long-time IDN investor and IDN expert David Wrixon, “[t]here are IDN investors out there that will make Frank Schilling look like an amateur.”

Speaking of aftermarket value, I do not think IDNs will overtake English ASCII .com domains anytime soon, so I wouldn’t agree with the statement above. However, perhaps I am not better in predicting the future than your favorite weather man, and local web surfing is on the rise, so I do believe that internationalized domain names will see a great appreciation in value over the next years. On the other hand, IDNs are still very speculative and a risky investment. They haven’t performed very well traffic-wise, either. After all, IDNs are a risky long-term investment, in my opinion. As most risky investments they might give a good return in the end.

Full article: How to Get Started with IDNs

Attorney John Berryhill has written an interesting article for CircleID titled The Single-Letter Domain Trademark Game. In the article, he explains why many companies are desperately trying to get a TM on single-letter .com domains, which ICANN might decide to release at some point in the future:

As some are aware, the question of making single-character domain names available has been a perennial topic of discussion within ICANN, championed by a few who have quietly been engaged in some interesting advocacy within the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) along a parallel track.

Although quieter than the rush to the gate witnessed at the Benelux TM office in order to qualify for the .eu Sunrise domain registration period, for those keeping score, there are now six winners of the peculiar lottery being pursued to obtain US trademark registrations of the form .com where is a single letter of the alphabet. The game is played by establishing some sort of use of .com marked upon goods or in connection with services, leveraging that use to obtain a trademark registration for the non-existent domain name, and then jumping out of the woodwork if and when ICANN decides to proceed with proposed auctions of these previously unregistrable domain names.

Continue reading here.

You can also find another lengthy and more detailed article about this issue on John Berryhill’s website.

Domain aftermarket Sedo has released its Domain Market Study for the year 2007. The report says that Sedo sold a total of more than $72 million worth of domain names in 2007, which is a 60% increase from 2006. I’m sure the introduction of Sedo’s new auction system as well as the acquisition of GreatDomains have helped a lot to boost sales last year. Sedo continues to be the power broker of the industry. I interviewed the company’s CEO Tim Schumacher, who is very knowledgable about the domain space and a frequent speaker and domain conferences, for a newspaper article on domain names in 2005. At that time, Sedo had just opened its office in Boston and reported sales of about $11 million for 2004, aiming for $20 million in 2005 (they ultimately exceeded that goal by more than $6 million).

What is also interesting, is that the average sales price per .com domain name sold at Sedo was $5,016, up 54%. The sales prices reported by large domain aftermarkets are a good indicator for the overall domain market, in my opinion, because aftermarkets complete more sales and domain transfers than anybody else. Therefore, they can compile quite accurate stats and give good perspectives of the near future of the domain industry. Given the rise in value of domains in 2007 and the sales we’ve seen this year already, I’m absolutely positive 2008 will be another great year for this industry and set new records when it comes to both the average sales price and the total value of domains sold to end users.

The full Domain Market Study 2007 is available on Sedo’s website.

Media Corporation has acquired Sport.co.uk for £135,000. The company plans to develop the domain into a sports website with news and statistics. Justin Drummond, chief executive of Media Corporation, said:

The value of a top-tier domain name combined with a profitable advertising-driven business model was recently illustrated by the Group’s successful sale of Casino.co.uk for up to £3.625 million. We are aiming to replicate this success with Sport.co.uk as we continue to increase the scale and diversity of the Group’s Web Publishing business.

Buying generic domains, then increasing their value by developing and promoting them is a good strategy for investors who have enough funds available to acquire one- and two-word domains. Keyword domains have lots of revenue potential, so they should not be parked forever. In addition, developing a domain will put you in a better situation when negotiating the possible resale of that domain. It’s easier to develop a generic domain than a made-up name, because you usually start off with existing direct navigation traffic already. Owners of generic domain names also have a head start when it comes to search engine optimization, due to search engines often listing generic domains that contain the term the user is searching for higher than other domains without that keyword.

Media Corp. also owns other online ventures, including Gambling.com, CreditCardExpert.co.uk and FlightComparison.co.uk.

[Press release]