DomainLore Blog.uk domain aftermarket and .uk drop catching plus anything that goes…

UPDATE: I’ve been made aware of the discussion of this post on Acorndomains involving the shill bidder. He seems to be using ‘skewed defense’ tactics which is a very popular way to play post-factum for the own advantage. “Sam thought” is a nice excuse, but the Sam guy has never placed bids before, hasn’t been on DomainLore for months(!) before he has magically arrived within 24 hours after the auction has been made live *directly* to the auction’s page, placed his bid and hasn’t visited DL ever since.

I have more evidence to prove that this was a co-operated bid. I am not going to provide all the evidence as it is saved for a possible Court case.

Believe me, I would not accuse anyone, in public especially, unless there is a compelling evidence.

ps: Even though it’s not relevant to his shill bidding, he neither sent any proof of the reason of Paypal reversals as he claims he did. Copy pasting e-mail from Paypal which basically says “reversal due to bank disputing this transaction” is not a proof, as it merely states what is known already and he could be well behind originated dispute with the bank.

James Williams aka James Fox Williams aka ‘Datafox Limited’, Datafox.co.uk aka “Fox Consulting UK” (foxconsultinguk.com), aka Jked.net, aka Cyberdyneseo.com, also known as TheCat on Acorndomains.co.uk

History at DomainLore:

- First domain sold: spanishwine.org.uk but did not even bother to reply to the buyer after numerous contact attempts. The mobile phone number provided during registration is originating from Switzerland and calls were never answered. The sale has failed.

- Second sold paydayloansfast.org.uk (to himself, unfortunately) by placing a shill bid in the auction under the name of ‘Sam Moreton’, e-mail: sam@cyberdyneseo.com, phone: 0****2682. There is no need to include all other bits of available evidence to link this shill bidding buyer acting as one with the seller. By simply examining whois details of the domain name cyberdyneseo.com, which a supposedly genuine buyer uses for his e-mail address, ‘james williams’ DNA booms all over it:

It is well-known that DomainLore takes very proactive steps to detect and catch all shill bidders and delivers a strong message of serious consequences for anyone willing to commit that fraud. The list of caught, banned and blacklisted persons continues to grow, but finally slowing down — it seems that most of those who wanted to try it, have already tried and now long gone. However, some opportunistic ‘individuals’ like this one are still popping up and their unconditional existence reflects the bitter reality of the world we live in.

DomainLore does it’s best to fight these people and besides automatic measurements (most of which disarm shill bidders in advance or during the act), I manually examine all auctions above £100 to ensure every bidder is genuine. I am absolutely confident to say that 99.9% of all auctions run here are beyond the slightless bit of any suspicion because the bids placed belong to distinctive or personally known to me buyers.

Fraudsters apparently underestimate the amount of screening involved and fall prey with their standard bag of tricks.

Anyway, let’s get back to this one.

What happened next is that failing to achieve sales, either he or his bank performed a reversal(!) of £5 listing fee Paypal payments.
That’s kind of over the top of impudence to me.
Paypal informed us of the first reversal on Friday, 9th of March with the second reversal received today. I thought not to bother contacting him due to the first reversal, but receiving second one today was already enough to start confronting his fraudulent actions:

To which he replied:

And he followed by another e-mail in a few minutes:

Leaving the arrogance of his e-mail replies aside, would you believe a shill bidder? I don’t.

After he was informed that he was in fact caught as a shill bidder, he has immediately changed the tone of his e-mails, replied that he is now contacting his bank and Paypal, started writing back as an absolutely different person, demonstrating his utmost decency in dealing with this ‘payment issue’. Eventually, as I don’t waste my breath talking to shill bidders, getting no replies to his e-mails, he decided to just pay the £10 back.
He never mentioned a word regarding been caught for shill bidding like it never happened.

I spoke to Paypal to find out if they know of any particular reason why this payment was canceled by the sender and they told me it could be that the bank itself suspected that this payment wasn’t authorised (unlikely to me), that there was not enough funds (also unlikely) or that the person himself informed the bank that he didn’t make the payment, so it was unauthorised and should be recalled. (Apparently, Paypal does nothing to help sellers dispute actions of unscrupulous buyers of intangible goods — too bad for Paypal, but that’s another story).

Now, what would be a shill bidder’s choice? Being irritated that he paid listing fees for more not sold domains, went to great lengths to lure buyers but completed no sales after all..

I’ll leave it to the readers to decide and make their judgments.

Even if he deserves a benefit of the doubt for these reversed charges, he is still a shill bidder, still a criminal (shill bidding is a criminal offense in the UK).

And by the way, thanks, James, you’ve also brightened a day of mine and many potential businesses who will now keep away from your activities.

The topic of trademarks in domain names is popping up on a regular basis and it is worth noting what DomainLore’s stance is in relation to this topic.

It comes as a one short enlightenment:
There is no such thing as a trademarked domain name.

Yes, you read it correctly. There are trademarked terms and domain names might consist of these words, but there are no domain names which are trademarked per se. (unless, of course, domain extension is a part of a trademark)

I am no lawyer to say all this, but I believe a proper common sense approach is enough to differentiate.

To give a detailed explanation, I’d like to publish my reply to a DomainLore seller, who have caught domain name based on someone’s else request and then became very worried after learning the term corresponds to a trademark and assumed this registration is automatically abusive and domain should have never been caught and let alone – auctioned.

You are welcome to post your thoughts in the comments below.

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It is not possible for DomainLore to monitor all advanced bids in order to recognise each and every trademark occurrence. It is left to the discretion of the bidders and to the responsibility of the sellers to determine whether the domain requested should be caught/registered and subsequently listed for sale without creating any possible legal circumstances.

Looking at the relation of trademarks and domain names, almost always the registration itself could not be causing much harm, especially without bad intent — it is the domain name usage which can later constitute to the abuse and/or trademark infringement. Of course one should refrain from registering ‘famous made-up’ trademarks in a first place, but in all other cases I preach a common sense approach to be applied for evaluating any possible registration, even if it might correspond to a known mark. Most generic domain names would almost always correspond to well-known trademarks but this obviously doesn’t make them automatically unsuitable to be registered.

Moreover, many people appear to be overly confused by the trademark law and become unnecessary concerned and paranoid as soon as any trademark appears in sight (as in your case – you are worrying without much reason). The truth is – trademark protects a word mark or a sign towards a certain set of uses. If one uses trademark for something different, not covered by the trademark classes, it is almost always fine to do so. If you take KFC trademark and start selling hydraulic machinery — you are fine, unless you use KFC logo and/or this type of goods is also covered by Kentucky’s Fried Chicken trademark registrations (which is quite safe to assume is not).

In your case it is unapparent from a mere look at the word, whether it relates to the existing trademark. ‘Maxibit’ sounds like a perfectly natural word combination of ‘maxi + bit’, very similar to ‘Mega bit’ and certainly not that kind of a word two different persons in the world couldn’t come up with. After a bit of Googling one can identify that the majority of prominent use of ‘maxibit’ belongs to a marketing company which also occupies Maxibit.com and domains in other TLD’s. After checking ‘maxibit’ trademarks in the UK, the trademark is registered as a word mark in three classes – 20, 35, 42. As long as someone is legitimately registering this domain name to be used in relation to any of other classes – *this registration is perfectly fine*.

But neither you nor I know what this bidder has in mind regarding this domain name. His intentions could be absolutely unrelated to this company. By registering and selling this domain name you do not break any trademark laws and do not earn any legal responsibility. If you’d have registered ‘maxibitstands.co.uk’ or ‘maxibitdisplays.co.uk’, then it would be a different case and correspond to the abuse on your part.

In addition to all of the above, we neither know if this bidder could be in fact related to this company.

Considering what was said, if I were you I wouldn’t worry, but I have marked this auction as ‘private’ to ease your mind.

The auction will end as normal, but no more bidders would be able to join in, it is ‘unlisted’ now. I believe it’s totally fine for you to sell this domain to the person who has requested it. However, if you are not willing to do so, I’ll provide you with the bidder’s details and then you can discuss with him how to end this matter correctly.

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So, you see, if the domain name is a trademark alone, it is most likely *not a problem*.
It is either if a trademark is a made-up word (not a combination of generic dictionary words) or a mark together with type of goods/services trademarked (tescoclothing.co.uk, samsungmobiles.co.uk..etc) then it is an abusive registration at a point of registration. Another good example is “One in a Million” case, when registered domain names could have not been used for anything else than to abuse trademarks and it was very clear from the domain name text itself.

In all other cases, it all depends on the domain name use. No need for a paranoia if you are just registering the domain name for a resale.

*small print: again, this post is not a legal advice.