Thank you everyone for participating and sharing your opinions on this matter.
Regarding the value of a name, there most certainly is a high value on certain domain names. When you spend the resources on marketing a web site/domain name for several months and spend development dollars building applications and services that correspond to the web site, you have converted a mere "arbitrary string of characters" to a valuable asset. For instance, the previous owner of 'sex.com' was awarded $65million from Verisign because they were negligent in allowing someone else to hijack it. Of course the case has been appealed and I believe is still pending. In this case, Verisign has displayed gross negligence, in just releasing the domain name to the public for no apparent reason. In many cases, negligence will supersede the liability stipulations in the agreements. One thing that might help everyone: There was a similar case involving the owner of 'domainbiz.com'. Does anyone know the outcome of this case? Thanks again! -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of George Kirikos Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 9:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Verisign Screw-up Hello, --- "Roger B.A. Klorese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > OK, but that domain has value because business value has been > developed for > it. There are virtually no domains on the net that have developed > intrinsic value as a result of being on the net, and the likelihood > that > his user has one is incredibly slim. There are a lot of domains that have intrinsic value, as one can tell via the auctions that go on at Great Domains, Afternic, eBay etc. Business.com was the record at $7.5 million, although probably sex.com would go for more, if it was ever to be auctioned. I don't think the original poster mentioned the name that was involved in this matter, but I suspect it must have been a generic one-word dot-com that gets lots of natural type-in traffic. Or, perhaps a short acronym (2 or 3-letter dot-com), or a name that they invested a lot of time and money in to get high link popularity across the search engines. If UltSearch snagged it, you can be sure it was worth more than $35. :) If the party involved has a registered trademark, that might help them to get the name back, but I suspect they don't have one. Sincerely, George Kirikos http://www.kirikos.com/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com
