The domain name Vista.com and the VISTA trademarks were sold by Innuity for $1.25 million. You can read the press release covering the sale here.

Sahar also has some commentary about the sale here. I think Vista.com is a fantastic generic domain name. It illustrates the topic of “domain usage.” Regardless of whether a huge company owns a trademark for the word, someone else can own it as long as the content doesn’t infringe on the other trademark.

An English cheesemaker has capitalized on a great marketing campaign by auctioning off a slab of cheese that had been the focus of 24 hour web television coverage seen by visiting cheddarvision.tv. After receiving over 1.65 million views on the website since December of 2006, and countless other views on its dedicated Myspace page, the 44 pound block of cheese is now listed for sale on Ebay.

This has to be one of the smartest interactive marketing campaigns I’ve seen in a while. The cheesemakers created interest for the past year using a .tv website, a Myspace page and a YouTube listing, and now they are using their website to direct interested viewers to the auction. The bidding is currently up to £520.00, and I can only hope that the typical scammers that place shill bids leave this auction alone.