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Corporate and Premier Services News
Fall 2007

Greetings! We hope you had a great summer. Fall is a busy time for domain name renewals and transfers as businesses get their house in order for the coming year. Keep your domain name portfolio secure and up-to-date by setting your key domains to auto renew or renewing them for a longer term. If you are renewing domains at multiple registrars, speak to a Webnames.ca Corporate Services Representative about domain consolidation. Consolidating your portfolio can help protect your domains from inadvertent expiration and unauthorized transfer while saving you time and money.

Go to the Source for Who-Is Information

Customers often ask me how they can find information on registered domain names , including who the owner is, contact information, how long it has been registered for and expiration date, among other things. Who-Is results can look and contain different information depending on the tool being used; this sometimes makes it difficult to locate the specific information you are searching for. When this happens I find it easier to go to the root - the Who-is lookup provided by the registry of a top level domain.

For customers wanting to do their own research, the following links will help you find precise and current Who-is data:

.CA - http://whois.cira.ca/public
.COM/.NET - http://registrar.verisign-grs.com/whois/
.ORG - http://www.pir.org
.BIZ - http://www.whois.biz
.INFO - http://www.afilias.info/cgi-bin/whois.cgi
.MOBI - http://mtld.mobi/domain/whois
.CN - http://ewhois.cnnic.net.cn
.US - http://www.whois.us

And of course, we're here to assist you as well. Finally, if you believe someone has registered a domain name that infringes on your trademark and/or intends to profit on your trademark by selling, renting, licensing or transferring the domain to another party, we can help you determine an appropriate course of action.

Nicholas C,
Webnames.ca Corporate and Premier Services Representative

Register First, Market Later

As a marketing professional, I pay close attention to press releases, advertising campaigns and marketing collateral. Working in the domain industry, my first instinct is to check if product names, taglines, brands and key messages have been registered. This week I noticed that a major car manufacturer failed to register the tagline of their current media campaign, a short and catchy phrase prominently featured in both their print ads and tv commercials. Although registration lapses are less common around product names, I have come across them in early press releases and announcements. Given the current speculative environment around domain names, missed names and phrases are rapidly registered by domainers and may require time, energy and considerable capital to retrieve them.

The domain of a product name, tagline or concept should always be registered before it enters the public sphere. Ideally, domains should be registered during the product development and marketing conceptualization stages. I strongly recommend businesses register all the names and/or phrases that made the proverbial short list, especially the .com's if they are available as they could vanish at any time. If you don't end up using the domains for a future product or campaign, you can simply forward the domain to the main company website to drive traffic or allow the registration to lapse- a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Julianna H,
Webnames.ca Marketing Coordinator

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Corporate Care News

Weekend Support

Weekend support is now available. Hours of operation are 10am to 2pm Saturdays, Sundays and Statutory Holidays by calling 1-866-221-7878.

After Hours Support

After-hours support is available to Corporate customers in the event of a service interruption. If one of your primary domain names is not resolving, or you cannot send or receive email and suspect your domain or DNS to be the cause, call toll-free 1-800-882-1958 between the hours of 5pm to 6am Pacific Standard Time Mondays through Fridays and between 2pm to 10am on weekends and holidays for assistance. Your issue will then be relayed to a Webnames.ca technician for immediate technical assistance.

New Products & Services Survey

Of the following products and services, which are you most likely to use? (choose more than one if applicable)

 

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Recent Domain Disputes and Resolutions

  • U.K. rock band Dire Straits wins dispute over www.direstraits.com.
  • Stephen Cleeve loses a dispute against Domains by Proxy and Consumer Protection over stephencleeve.com.
  • Bowring and Co. Inc. loses a dispute over bowring.ca.
  • Vessel Assist Association of America, Inc. wins a dispute over vesselassist.ca.
  • Twentieth Century Fox wins a dispute over thesimpsonsmovie.com.
  • Mckee Homes wins a dispute over mckeehomes.ca.
  • Google loses a Gmail trademark case in Germany.

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Domain Industry News

Nevada Man Impersonated Lawyer to Steal Domain Names - A Nevada man pleaded guilty on September 6th to plotting to steal domain names from their legitimate owners by impersonating a California intellectual property lawyer and sending threatening letters in hopes of convincing owners to turn over their domains to him.

Worldwide Domain Registrations Reach 138 Million - VeriSign's quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief indicates that domain registrations have topped 138 million globally. This represents a 31% increase over the previous year. The most popular TLDs include: .com, .de, .net, .uk, .cn, and .org. The number of ccTLD names grew to 51.5 million, a 36% annual growth rate. The number of .com and .net names grew to 73 million, a 27% annual growth rate.

.CN Domain Becomes Third Largest ccTLD - China's Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), registry for China's .cn domain, has announced that the .cn domain registrations have reached more 5.3 million, making it the third largest country-code Top-Level Domain, following Germany's .de and Britain's .uk.

.uk domain reaches 6 million registrations

.eu domain reaches 2.5 million registrations

New York Passes Domain Name Law - New York state has enacted a law preventing a person from registering a domain name that is similar to or the same as another living person or business with the specific intent to profit from selling the domain name to that person or business.

Spam Distribution Study finds 94% of Scams Hosted on Individual Web Servers

Using a combination of criteria including PageRank and Alexa, succeedwiththis.com blog has compiled a list of the top 30 "most wasted" domain names.

An ICANN working group is gathering facts and opinions on domain tasting

A petition against domain name parking, and a comment by Mark Jeftovic

GoDaddy and Afilias to Bid on .US Registry - GoDaddy and Afilias have announced a joint venture called The Domain Name Alliance Registry which has bid on becoming the new registry operator for the .us top-level domain. The contract for the current .us registry operator, NeuStar, expires in October.

The first issue of Modern Domainer magazine has been published.

ICANN launches a monthly magazine.

Jay Westerdal reports that 4000 iPhone related domain names have been bought this year, and that Apple has acquired iphone.com.

A Financial Post article on British Columbia's domainers

A Business 2.0 Magazine article on domainer Kevin Ham

Michael Geist criticizes the lack of progress, including CIRA's, toward internationalized domain names (IDNs).

The website for Kieran McCarthy's book "Sex.com: One Domain, Two Men, Twelve Years and the Brutal Battle for the Jewel in the Internet's Crown".

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Event of the Quarter

IPIC

IPIC Annual Meeting
www.ipic.ca
October 11-14, 2007
Westin Bayshore, Vancouver, B.C.

The Intellectual Property Institute of Canada is holding its 81st annual meeting. The three day conference features sessions on exploiting and managing IP assets and the enforcement of IP rights in China. View the full program.

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