This is a guest post about the Internet Commerce Association from domain investor Nat Cohen, President of Telepathy, Inc.

The Lord Giveth and the Lord taketh away.

For the domain industry, the part of the Lord is played by the U.S. Government and ICANN.

In the early days of the Internet, the U.S. Government policy allowed billions of dollars of domains to be registered on a first-come first-served basis for a registration fee per domain of $100 or less.

Those of us who benefited from this “landrush” know how fortunate we’ve been. Even those domainers who weren’t involved in the early days, benefit from the tremendous value inherent in domain names that is still not fully recognized.

But it is a mistake to confuse being lucky with being smart.

Being smart is taking full advantage of the good luck that comes your way and not taking it for granted. That is why I consider it smart to … → Read More

Sedo broker Dave Evanson has been given another domain name exclusive, as I learned his company is currently brokering Massachusetts.com on behalf of Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc.  A sales price has not been publicized. My best guess is that it will take a mid to high 6 figure offer to close a deal on it, although that’s just a guess.

Nat’s companies own a number of high value domain names (like OceanCity.com and Retirement.com to name just a couple), and it’s not a surprise that he would opt to sell. I personally have found that to maximize the value of a geodomain name, it needs to be developed, and with so many one word descriptive/generic .com names, it would not be feasible to successfully develop them all within one’s lifetime.

With millions of dollars in advertising and marketing spend this past year, I could see the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism upgrading its website from MassVacation.com. There really isn’t a better domain name for them to own, granted it will be an expensive acquisition. I also think it would behoove the state government to acquire this domain name, but I would imagine that would be a difficult acquisition to make in light of the dour economy.

I don’t recall seeing any state .com domain names on the market in quite some time. Just recently, Ryan Colby announced that Sedo had secured the rights to broker Austin.com.

To learn more about the sale of Massachusetts.com, Dave Evanson can be emailed at dave.evanson@sedo.com, and to learn more about Austin.com, you can email Ryan Colby at ryan.colby@sedo.com.

I’ve known about these plans for several weeks, and I am happy to share the press release from Fred Mercaldo and his team at Scottsdale.com, who have been working hard to make this a reality. This puts Fred and his company at the forefront of the geodomain industry, as they will have more pure city .com domain names under their management than just about any other company.

My company’s Burbank.com will be one of the first websites released under this marketing and development deal, and I am excited to be a part of it. I am confident Fred and his team will be able to drive considerably more revenue with Burbank.com.

Fred will be speaking at the Geodomain Expo in New Orleans at the end of the month, and he will be available to answer any questions city .com domain owners may have.

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GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announces development of over 40 Pure City.com Sites in Major Development/Marketing Deal

Scottsdale.com’s “City In The Box” Software to power sites; CitiesPlanet.com formed to Manage Advertising and Marketing Duties.

Scottsdale, AZ — April 21, 2010 — Fred Mercaldo, Managing Partner of Scottsdale.com, LLC and newly formed GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announced today a major software development and marketing deal that includes over 40 City.com sites.  “Our proven software platform (www.CityInTheBox.com) will power the sites; once they are launched, CitiesPlanet will perform all marketing and advertising functions, and will procure local partnerships and contracts that will monetize the sites.  We look forward to a successful launch, and our goal is to grow to 150 pure City.com properties under management within 24 months”

Based in Scottsdale, CitiesPlanet (www.CitiesPlanet.com) has worked with numerous creative technology and digital marketing specialists to develop a marketing platform that will successfully reach out to local business in each City.com area.  Combined with a robust CRM system, each business will receive a custom media kit with their specific company featured, giving business owners numerous advertising and partnering options with their local, official City.com branded site.  “Our success rate so far has been 15% to 30% response rate, depending on which Directory category is being marketed, which is incredible”, says Mercaldo.  “In addition, our system features a “nurture” campaign in the event a business has not responded to our first offer, and will automatically continue to send the opportunity to the business owner 3 additional times”.

The majority of the initial City.com sites are owned by State Ventures, LLC.  “Fred Mercaldo has the vision to foresee the future of local Internet advertising and the marketing talent to accelerate the shift of local advertising to city portals,” says Nat Cohen, President of State Ventures, LLC. “Fred is one of the stand-up guys in the Geo Domain industry.  We are very pleased to be partnering with Fred in helping him realize this vision for the industry.”

The City.com properties included in the initial launch feature a very diverse group of demographics and economies.  “Everything from Kalamazoo.com to Burbank.com to Sausalito.com to GreatFalls.com; each City will have its own distinct characteristics and opportunities.  We look forward to the challenge to make each City.com property a household name in each community” says Mercaldo.

CitiesPlanet will also handle all of the marketing and advertising responsibilities for Scottsdale.com, Chandler.com, Mesa.com, FountainHills.com, Tempe.com, and ApacheJunction.com, all of which have been launched and are connected within the Arizona market.  Mercaldo recruited former Travelocity and RazorGator executive Mark Wilson to head CitiesPlanet.  “Mark brings a successful track record of accomplishment to the table, combining both marketing expertise and technology capabilities, which is exactly what this project requires”, says Mercaldo.  The remaining City.com’s will begin launching the first week of May, and will continue to roll out through July until all 40 are established and successfully monetized.  Mercaldo states, “Our entire staff, led by Becky Kelley, has worked tirelessly this past 5 months to get all of these sites ready to go.  We are very pleased to be able to finally announce these partnerships, as it has been on the drawing board for quite some time.  We are ready to go!”

For more information on GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC, contact:

Fred Mercaldo, 602-859-3786, fred@scottsdale.com

For more information on Scottsdale.com, LLC and “City In The Box” software, contact:

Becky Kelley, 480-343-3654, Becky@scottsdale.com

For more information on CitiesPlanet, contact:

Mark Wilson, 602-363-3345, Mark@CitiesPlanet.com

State Ventures LLC owns and develops many geographic domain names and web properties, including Maryland.com, OceanCity.com, Annapolis.com, Pennsylvania.com, Virginia.com, NorthCarolina.com, Missouri.com, and Minnesota.com.

Nat Cohen had a fantastic article about the UDRP process on Larry Fischer’s blog the other day, and it’s a “must read” for anyone that invests in domain names. The article has spawned discussions in private about UDRP defense and prevention, and it has been interesting to learn how other domain owners cope with this potential threat.

I received an email this morning from Tom Rask, of Logical Sites, whose company owns and operates websites on geodomain names including Sunnyvale.com, Sheboygan.com, Kenosha.com, and EurekaSprings.com. Tom offered some unique insight and advice, and with his permission and encouragement, I have posted the contents of his email below.

The basic problems with UDRP process are:

1. It is a quasi-judicial process, not a judicial process.
2. There is no accountability for WIPO or for the panelists.
3. You can assert the fluffiest of common-law TM rights with impunity
4. There is no monetary compensation for you if the opponent asserts an overly broad scope of use of their TM. They can “give it a whirl”, something they could not do so cheaply and with such impunity in a real TM court case.

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Illuminating example: a few years ago, I lost a UDRP case that I knew I was going to lose. I had registered wwwxyz.com, where xyz was the name of European multinational with over 100 K employees. I had good reason to want to really jerk xyz’s chain, reasons that don’t matter for the purpose of this discussion.

So I decided to be totally over the top. Luckily for me, the WIPO case administrator made clear procedural errors, so I had occasion to suggest to him and his boss that perhaps “he should return to his native Norway, where unions can be counted on to protect the incompetent”. When WIPO did not offer me an avenue of appeal for mishandling the case, I said that it is no coincidence that corrupt organization like the IOC and WIPO are both located in Switzerland because they know they are safe there. In the US, they would be prosecuted under the RICO act. “Switzerland:” I said “high mountains, low morals”.

I had a lot of fun and inflicted many, many manhours on my opponent, who probably wished they had just bought the damn name instead. I suspect that WIPO has me on a blacklist….:-)

So I lost, and the Panelist wrote this at the end of his decision “Finally, the Panel cannot leave this case without commenting on the behaviour of the Respondent, which has been a disgrace, a grotesque abuse of this administrative proceeding”.

I e-mailed the Panelist (an experienced UK TM attorney) and said: yes, exactly. I was abusing the process, and if I had done that in a court of law, the judge would not have allowed it. The Panelist told me that he had taken my case seriously, as he does all cases, and that he spent 70 hours on the case. I apologized for that.

The Panelist and became friends via e-mail. He agreed that it is a problem that there are no sanctions: no sanctions if WIPO or similar orgs don’t follow the rules, no sanctions against the kind of roiling rancor I had engaged in. And no sanctions if a Panelist just decided to suck up to his perceived big money trademark interests. So it can become a Wild West Circus very quickly.

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So what should you do if you get hit with a UDRP?

1. See if you and your opponent can agree on a Panelist. In scania.mobi, my opponent incredibly agreed to my suggestion of using Diane Cabell as the sole Panelist. She is a very fairminded corporate counsel for Creative Commons (a great org) and formerly of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Had she decide against me, I would have still felt it was fair.
2. If you cannot agree, you can do what Nat did (in the LomaLinda.com UDRP): a 3-member Panel. But this is risky. You can still lose 2-1 by getting two people like Richard Page on the Panel. If you lose and then go to court, the judge may take the approach “why should I overturn WIPO”….even though a WIPO UDRP decision is not a judicial decision.
3. If your name is actually important to you, consider filing in federal court in order to stop the UDRP process. Federal court is very expensive. Bad PR is also very expensive and your opponent will know that, too. Once the court case has been filed, asserting abuse on your opponent’s part, then you can talk to them. Now they know that you are mounting a vigorous defense.

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Nat won 2-1, and that is great. But my point is: he could just as easily have lost 2-1.
UDRP is a crapshoot that is best avoided.
I have also noticed that lawyers usually do no better at UDRP than mere mortals.
This is a not a slam against lawyers, just a reflection of the animal that UDRP is.

If you get hit with a UDRP case, I’d be happy to discuss it with you.

In the last year, I’ve probably received 5 or 6 emails from people who had concerns that geographic domain names could be risky to own in the event a city or municipal jurisdiction files a complaint or lawsuit, despite a number of cases where the domain owner retained the domain name. Some of these cases include Pocatello.com, MyrtleBeach.com, Barcelona.com, StMoritz.com, and others.

In a UDRP dispute decision that should pacify any concerns about geodomain names, LomaLinda.com was retained by Nat Cohen’s company, StateVentures, LLC , which was represented by Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com Law Firm. The Complainant was Loma Linda University Medical Center, which claimed to have rights to the Loma Linda mark.

Although there was a dissenting opinion, panelist Richard Page made a statement in his dissent which should be noted by geodomain owners: “the general rule that geographic names are not subject to trademark protection.”

The reason for the dissenting opinion is that Loma Linda was apparently used by the Complainant’s predecessors prior to it being used as a geographic location (city of Loma Linda, California). In the decision though, two of the panelists cited the various uses of Loma Linda by parties other than the Complainant, including the first Loma Linda city directory in 1936, the Loma Linda Food Company in 1937, and the fact that the Justice Court was established in Loma Linda in 1946.

The dissenting panelist disagreed that some of the other usages of “Loma Linda” indicated the University had given up rights to the term, however. In addition, because the domain name is possibly earning PPC revenue from potential competitors of the Complainant, it could be infringing on its rights.

In the end, Nat’s company has retained LomaLinda.com, and it will probably developed when the company has an opportunity to do so. This is a solid win for geodomain owners – and it’s also a very good reason to have a 3-person UDRP panel. Congrats to Ari, who was also responsible for defending other geodomain names in the past like Pocatello.com and StMoritz.com to name just a couple.

MiniSites.com to provide website development services to domain name investors.

Washington, D.C. – March 25, 2009 – DN Media Corp. and Telepathy, Inc. announced today the creation of a joint venture called MiniSites.com. The new company provides mini site development services to domain name investors, offering them an affordable alternative to monetize their valuable assets.

“We are thrilled to be partnered with Nat Cohen of Telepathy on this project,” said DN Media co-founder Bogdan Nastea. “Nat has ten years of experience in the domain industry, and he brings an impressive track record of turning domain names into successful businesses.”

MiniSites.com offers three levels of mini site development to accommodate all types of domains and budgets. The Micro, starting at $80, is a one-page site which is ideal for lead generation and affiliate marketing. The Mini, starting at $170, is a five-page site which provides more content to visitors, keeping them engaged and coming back. The Big Mini, starting at $290, takes the Mini to a higher level by offering an advanced link building campaign, as well as a thorough analysis of monetization options.

All packages include a dedicated project manager, unique content written by native English speakers, text logo design, header design, link building campaign, flexible monetization options, targeted keyword research, search engine optimization, and free hosting.

About Telepathy, Inc. – Founded in 1999, Telepathy, Inc. develops online publications. It developed a network of regional guides, anchored by Pennsylvania.com, Maryland.com, and NorthCarolina.com and including Annapolis.com, CollegePark.com and OceanCity.com. Telepathy is experienced in database development and specializes in the dynamic delivery of customized content.

About DN Media Corp. – DN Media Corp. specializes in domain name investing, website design and development, and search engine optimization.