This sale follows HuntingMoon sale of Eric Borgos’ adult domain portfolio for $1.3 Million.

Lets point out right away that PornStar.com is an operating site not just a domain and the sale included all content, affiliates and members.

The sale transaction started in 2010 and after a year and a half of payments, the buyer is now taking possession of all of the assets and plan to  redevelop the site according to Evan Horowitz, CEO of Hunting Moon.

Some other interesting facts Evan shared with us is that he along with this partner Michael from HuntingMoon, originally bought pornstar.com from L & H Apparel/Pornstar Clothing Company in 1999.

Evan and Michael sold the domain direct to Mallcom for the second pornstar.com transaction a few years later — and, then brokered the name via HuntingMoon for a third transaction on the same domain!

HuntingMoon’s founders have handled over $2.5M related to this domain.

A second interesting tidbit about this sale is the fact that the lead was generated via HuntingMoon’s partnership with the GFY.com community.  Not long after the partnership was forged, did the sale happen.  Any question marks about whether the adult community would continue to buy top web properties, during a reported contraction of the adult site market, were erased with this sale right off the bat in August of 2010.

A third factoid that is of note, is that the domain was sourced by David at HuntingMoon within a few short weeks of his hiring.  So, a new member of the team brought in a $1.5M sale during his ramp-up period of his employment contract.

HuntingMoon.com ongoing AVN Internext Adult Domain Auction featuring hundreds of adult domain names is taking place thru February 9.

For more information on the AVN auction or to bid please visit: bid.huntingmoon.com.…

(PRWeb February 03, 2012)

Read the full story at

Here are the relevant facts and finding from the three member panel:

“The Complainant is a Mexican individual who founded a business named Solanum Laboratories in Mexico in 2003.”

“The Complainant is the owner of a variety of Mexican registered trademarks for the word mark SOLANUM, the earliest registered of which is trademark number 901,941 registered on September 28, 2005″

“At the date of this Decision, the website associated with the disputed domain name consisted of a parking page which stated that the disputed domain name was for sale and provided hyperlinks described as “related searches” including “Resveratrol Juice”, “Colageno msm”, “Energy”, “Fusion” and “Best Resveratrol Brand”.”

“In the present dispute, the Panel is satisfied that the Complainant has made out a prima facie case that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name based upon its submissions that the Respondent is not known by the name “Solanum”; the Respondent neither has the Complainant’s authorization nor the Complainant’s license or franchise to use the disputed domain name; and there is no relation between the Respondent’s name and the disputed domain name from which any right or legitimate interest can be inferred. The burden of production accordingly shifts to the Respondent.”

“The Respondent’s submissions focus squarely on the fact that it was making a bona fide offering of goods or services at the disputed domain name (within the meaning of paragraph 4(c)(i) of the Policy) via pay-per-click parking directly related to the generic nature and definition of the word which comprises the disputed domain name, namely “solanum”, a genus of plants. ”

“In the present case, the Respondent provides a sworn statement averring that it is a professional domainer which regularly engages in the business of using domain names to display advertising links.”

“It also provides evidence demonstrating that the disputed domain name is a dictionary word. ”

“Furthermore, there is neither any evidence that the disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a famous or distinctive trademark nor that the Respondent had actual knowledge of the Complainant’s mark when it registered the disputed domain name. ”

“The Panel notes in addition that the advertising configured by the Respondent to appear on the website associated with the disputed domain name (at least when viewed from the Respondent’s jurisdiction) is related to the dictionary meaning of the word “solanum”, namely the relevant plants or extracts derived from them, and does not appear to relate to the trademark value of the Complainant’s SOLANUM trademark.”

“In the circumstances of the present case, given that the Respondent was seeking to register a dictionary word, albeit by automated means, the Panel considers that the Respondent’s actions can be considered to be sufficient good faith efforts to avoid the registration and use of a domain name that was identical to a mark held by another.…

(PRWeb February 03, 2012)

Read the full story at

(PRWeb February 03, 2012)

Read the full story at

(PRWeb February 03, 2012)

Read the full story at

KeyDrive S.A. Acquires Moniker and SnapNames from Oversee.net

Luxembourg and Los Angeles, Calif. (February 1, 2012). KeyDrive S.A., an internet solutions holding company with subsidiaries providing domain registration, monetization and aftermarket services, announced today that it has acquired the Moniker and SnapNames business units of Oversee.net, a leader in online performance marketing.

Moniker® and SnapNames® offer businesses and individuals an array of services for domain name registration, acquisition, brokerage and sales. Moniker introduced the live domain name auction concept. SnapNames operates the largest online auction of expired and deleting domain names, giving its customers access to valuable names.

“The purchase of these two leaders in the domain aftermarket perfectly fits our global growth strategy”, said Alexander Siffrin, Chairman of the KeyDrive S.A., and CEO and founder of Key-Systems®. “We now have the opportunity to extend our global outreach, target a broader customer base and cross-sell our services. Furthermore, our European clients will gain access to US buyers and sellers of domain names. We’re delighted to welcome the Moniker and SnapNames teams to KeyDrive S.A.”

“The sale of these assets allows us to focus more on our core monetization and vertical markets divisions which are the fundamental building blocks of our global performance marketing network,” noted Debra Domeyer, Co-CEO of Oversee. “As the domain industry landscape changes, it is essential that we invest in new technologies that leverage our existing platform and unlock the potential of domain traffic. Our focus is on developing new monetization alternatives for both publishers and advertisers. We also want to thank Craig Snyder and the Moniker and SnapNames teams for their years of dedicated service. ”

Oversee was advised in the sale process by Petsky Prunier LLC.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (4)

This information came to light this week when Sedo inadvertently reported a sale that was supposed to be confidential and Francois from Domaining left a comment on TheDomains.com telling us that not only should have the sale been confidential but that Sedo.com only acted as Escrow agent for the transaction.

We reached out to Sedo which confirmed that its served solely as the escrow agent in the domain name in question.

In our opinion Sedo should not include domain names in their weekly sales report in which they only act as escrow agent.

There are two major problems IMHO with including escrow only sales in their weekly sales reports.

For one the Sedo weekly report as it is transmitted to blogs and other news sources weekly, including TheDomains.com always starts with the following language:

“”Please find the weekly sales list attached. This past week there were a total of …….. sales through our marketplace, totaling over $………”

For us when someone handles solely the escrow function of receiving the funds and transferring the domain, its misleading to say the “sale took place through our marketplace”

It would be like Escrow.com claiming it sold $X number of dollars of domains every week because they cleared the transactions.

Unless a domain is sold through and by virtue of a broker or the online sales and purchase system, commonly referred to as a marketplace, the domain should not be claimed to be sold through the marketplace.

Secondly including such sales in Sedo numbers can result in the double reporting of sales.

For example if we at MostWantedDomains.com sell a domain for $5K and uses Sedo rather than Escrow.com to act as escrow agent the sale will be reported by us to us to DnJournal.com and it will be reported by Sedo.com as well. Obviously if we sold the domain through Escrow.com instead of Sedo there would be no chance of double reporting.

We reached out to Sedo this week to discuss the issue who issued the following response:

“”Sedo has a policy of transparently sharing the percentage of external transfers that take place at our marketplace, and we publish those numbers as part of our quarterly and annual reports. ”

“In 2011 just 6% of all transactions were external transfers, which translates to only 2.3% of our published sales value (in dollars) for 2011.”

“External transfers are part of the marketplace, and we will continue to report them in our weekly marketplace report, and will also continue to transparently show the percentage volume in our quarterly and yearly reports (2011 report).”

“We will of course also continue to honor clients’ confidentiality requests, independently from the source of the transaction.…

(PRWeb February 03, 2012)

Read the full story at