Three-member panel agrees bank had no reasonable basis for bringing the case. A panel has affirmed a decision denying PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.'s cybersquatting complaint against pnc.co.uk and pnc.uk. It has also affirmed that the bank's case was reverse domain name hijacking. PNC, a large bank, filed the original dispute under the Nominet Dispute Resolution Service in July this year.

Motion.io seemed like the perfect domain for this business. Turns out, it had some issues. Perry Rosenbloom thought he had a great domain to launch his business on: motion.io. But three years later, he rebranded the business to LaunchBay. On today's show, Perry explains why the company decided to rebrand. He also shares some advice for startup founders to help them avoid his mistakes.

Large finance company seeks to recover 49 domain names. Financial services company BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit (pdf) against 49 domain names that it alleges infringe its trademarks. The company filed the in rem lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia, where both the .com registry, Verisign, and the .org registry, Public Interest Registry, are located. According to the lawsuit, some of the domains are being used for scams, and others are listed for sale.

Move comes ahead of more top level domain expansion. Ethos Capital, the private equity firm that acquired a majority stake in Identity Digital in 2021, announced a new funding round for the company today. Ethos completed a continuation vehicle (CV) transaction for Identity Digital, bringing in institutional investors including TPG GP Solutions, funds managed by Neuberger, Accel-KKR, Coller Capital, CVC Secondary Partners, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and 10 East, among others.

A bitcoin forum, a private equity company, and Delaware North bought domain names. Sedo's top public sale this week was a private equity company buying the .com to match its .co.uk domain. Here's a list of end user domain name sales that were completed at Sedo over the past week. You can view previous lists like this here. Ansor.com $56,482 - Ansor is a private equity company in the UK.

Trademark group had asked court to settle circuit split on domain registration dates. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal in a cybersquatting dispute over trx.com. Had the court heard the case, it could have had significant ramifications for how the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is applied. Loo Tze Ming bought the domain name trx.com for $138,000 in April 2022.

Digging into the opportunities for domains with the word group in them. Afternic has published its top keywords for aftermarket sales in October, and group shot up to the number two spot. Here's the list of keywords: ai group my and home it us new health care auto services crypto tech real pro me law house bet Group is typically on the list but moved into the second spot this month.

Fast-growing domain sales platform adds new features to improve conversion rates for domain sellers. Fruits didn't set out to become a domain name-only sales platform. It just sort of worked out that way. When the business launched in 2022, it was a marketplace for all types of digital goods. But the founding team quickly realized that domain names were the best market to tackle.

Complainant cited cases that didn't back up his claims or didn't exist. A UDRP panelist has admonished a Complainant for citing cases that didn't back up the Complainant's claims. At least one of the cases didn't even exist. Quincy Hall / Advice Only filed the dispute against the domain AdviceOnly.com. There were many problems with Hall's case, but the panelist found against him on the very first prong: whether the domain was identical or confusingly similar to a mark in which the Complainant has rights.

Web security company shows sophisticated web of bad actors. Earlier this year, shortly after Google announced it was opting all advertisers out of AdSense for Domains, I issued a warning: this would be bad for web security. A new research report confirms my hypothesis. As traditional pay-per-click domain parking becomes less profitable, more people are turning to zero-click (aka direct) advertising.

These domains were auctioned for $2,000 or more in November. Newfold Digital's domain sales platforms, NameJet and SnapNames, combined to sell 126 domains for $2,000 or more in November. These sales totaled about $468k. There weren't any massive sales — the top sale was $12,500 — but these domains stood out to me: Crosses.com $12,500 - A dictionary noun and verb.

NTIA issues draft RFP and outlines two-phase selection process to pick winner by April. The U.S. government will open a Request for Proposal next year to select a registry operator for the .us top level domain. The government currently contracts with GoDaddy Registry, which inherited the agreement when it acquired Neustar's domain name business in 2020. Neustar had been awarded a ten-year contract in 2019, although much of that term consisted of option years.

Domain investor digs into the sales behind his eight-figure year. Domain investor Braden Pollock was on a panel I moderated at NamesCon last month, and he mentioned on stage that he was having a record year in domain sales. I followed up to see if Braden would talk about it on the podcast. He sent over a complete list of his sales this year, and on today's show, we dive into many of the details behind his eight-figure year.

Vercel, Bolt, and now Anything announced as customers using the company's AI. On episode #545 of the Domain Name Wire Podcast, I talked to name.com's Carlos Armada about the registrar's new API for resellers. The registrar rebuilt the API with features that work better with AI tools. Armada mentioned at the time that Replit was using the API. This week, the company announced several other companies that are using it: Bolt, Netlify, and Vercel.

Recent feature improves process for adding domains to the watchlist. My process for expired domains works something like this: Find domains I want to buy through ExpiredDomains and save them to the ExpiredDomains watchlist Copy the list and place backorders in bulk on DropCatch and SnapNames Until recently, the second part wasn't an option on GoDaddy. Each domain had to be manually added to the watchlist.

NFL team failed to convince panel that domain investor registered and used the domain in bad faith. The NFL's L.A. Rams team has lost a cybersquatting case it filed with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the domain name rams.com. Domain name investor Frank Mardian, also known as "Maple Dots," acquired the domain for CAN 50,000 in November 2022. According to the response, a Turkish agency that represented a large company called Rams offered to acquire the domain early this year for $2 million.

Buyers and sellers behave differently as budgets close and tax deadlines approach. December is an interesting month in the domain aftermarket. On the one hand, many people are traveling and out of the office. On the other hand, domain investors are trying to "rightsize" their income statement, and businesses are often looking to spend budget money allocated for the current year.

Company thought the domain registrant was deceased when it filed UDRP. A three-person Czech Arbitration Court UDRP panel has denied a cybersquatting complaint against the domain name gabler.com, with one panelist ruling that the case was reverse domain name hijacking. Gabler Maschinenbau GmbH, a German marine technology company, filed the dispute. Before filing the dispute, the company submitted an offer on Sedo and tried to contact the owner.

An AI platform, an oil refinery business, and a crypto exchange bought domain names. Sedo's domain sales rebounded after the Thanksgiving holiday. The top public sale over the past week was $50,000 for a three letter .xyz domain. Here's a list of end user domain name sales that were recently completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this…

Existing investors add to balance sheet. Newfold Digital, a rollup of domain name and web hosting companies, announced today that it has raised an additional $100 million of funding. Its existing owners, Clearlake Capital Group, L.P., and Siris Capital Group, provided the funding. The company is due to receive an additional cash infusion upon the completion of the sale of MarkMonitor to Com Laude…

Panelist said Ekin SAS left out key details in its filing. A French food company has been found (pdf) to have tried reverse hijacking the domain name EkinFrites.com. According to its website, Ekin SAS operates both a frozen food business that sells fries and a restaurant. It uses the domain name ekin.fr. It filed the dispute against Georges Topal, Financiere FD.

Learn about the joint WIPO-ICA UDRP review and get a preview of January's ICA meeting in Las Vegas. Last week, World Intellectual Property Organization and Internet Commerce Association (ICA) published a final report of their collaborative review of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. On today's show, ICA General Counsel Zak Muscovitch explains how this collaboration came to be and what the results were.

Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy lead the way for multi-year domain registrations. Domain Name Wire's monthly .com registrar charts look at the raw number of .com registrations. When reviewing the latest data, I thought it would be interesting to look at which registrars sell the most multi-year initial registrations. To analyze the data, I first sorted each registrar by the number of new .com registrations in the latest month (August 2025).

An end of an era at Tucows and fallout from AdSense for Domains were top stories last month. These were the top five posts on Domain Name Wire last month, ranked by views: 1. Slipknot.com owner shows up to defend domain against Slipknot band - After the band filed an in rem lawsuit, the owner of the domain said it would respond to the lawsuit.

Panelist found no evidence of targeting. A German company that provides product and service comparison services has been found to have tried reverse domain name hijacking. Check24 GmbH filed the dispute (pdf) against the domain name check24.co.uk. Under Nominet's Domain Resolution Service (DRS), a Complainant must show that it has rights in a mark that's similar or matches the domain, and that the Respondent's registration of the domain is abusive.