Opinions

Domain name auction house auctioning trademark domains

About a month back a well known domain name auction house was auctioning some trademark domains.

This is no big news if the domains were expired or dropped.

But in this case the domain names were auctioned by a “well-known” broker/seller in domain name industry. Well, he actually became “well-known” just a few months back.

What makes this worse is that the auction and these domain names were promoted in this auction house with a banner on the front page of their website.

I checked most of these domains and found that they were being brokered by this broker/seller guy.

So this is what probably happened:

  • the owner decided to sell the TM domains,
  • the broker accepted to sell these names on behalf of the owner,
  • the broker submitted the domains to the auction house,
  • the auction house accepted the domains,
  • the auction house decided to PROMOTE these domains by creating a banner and posting it on their homepage (and in the featured auctions section)

So this is not some casual TM auction of expired domains that sort of happened. This had several decisions/actions behind it.

You can still see the banner on archive.org if you search for it. There are 5 TM domains (mostly misspells) on the banner.

I will not mention names, the auction house or the domain names. If you want you do your research and find out.

I will not mention names, yet. Get ready. A storm of revelations is coming soon.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

4 comments

  1. This article makes no sense, if you have something of value present the findings, with the name, and venue.

    ???

  2. I would stay clear of TM domains. Legal troubles may rise eventually.
    Let me get my storm coat. 😉

  3. I did notice quite a few trademark domains at several auctions, notably Flippa. Sedo do advice potential buyers to make sure that any domain at their auction does not violate any existing trademarks before ordering.

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