DomainTools Blog

A new lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District Court of Illinois by Vulcan Golf against the following companies: Google, Inc. Oversee.net, Sedo LLC, Dotster, Internet REIT, and John Does 1 through 10. The Civil Docket for the case is number 1:07-cv-03371. The demand is for $1,000,000 and it cites Trademark Infringement (15:1051). The case was filed on the 15th of this month and the nature of the suit was “470 Racketeer/Corrupt Organization”. The documents for the case were not available because they are said to be not legible however one could obtain those documents directly from the clerk’s office by calling 312-435-5699 during normal business hours.

I assume this is a domain parking lawsuit because they name parking companies. Thanks to George Kirikos for giving us a heads up.

We have seen some companies complain about their name triggering ads on the actual Google search engine but my gut feeling tells me this lawsuit has to do with companies that have domain typos of Vulcan Golf.com.

Changes on the Management page of Internet REIT have appeared since Google last crawled them. We compared the old cached page with the current one and it showed there was a lot of change. We are not sure what this means for Internet REIT but it sure is interesting. The talk over at DomainState is that that, “Maybe they’re trying to get a better lineup on that page for IPO purposes?” said, safesys. Then DomainStar said, “I have been an underwritter in over 300 IPO’s and my instincts tell me that your instincts have hit the nail right on the head!” I wonder if it is true?

Bob Martin PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER (DELETED)
Craig Snyder CEO (No Change)
Sid Parfait EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
Adam Dicker EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
Eddie Hebert VP FINANCE (ADDED)
Lisa Box VP DOMAIN SALES (No Change)
Tim Chen VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (No Change)
Jacob Hammond DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS (DELETED)
Drake Harvey VP TECHNOLOGY (ADDED)
John Brock GENERAL COUNSEL (No Change)

Full Changes below:

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Bob Martin PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER (DELETED)
Bob Martin is the President and a co-founder of iREIT. Prior to co-founding Internet REIT, Martin served as CEO of JumpStart Partners, Inc., a merchant banking firm specializing in mergers, acquisitions, and corporate development. From its inception in 2000, JumpStart worked with over 60 clients, focusing in the technology and energy industries.Bob has also had a varied career in the technology and investment industries. He served as Vice President of a mid-market e-logistics and e-customer care firm, the Director of E-Commerce at Trilogy Software, and also held roles with Advent International Global Private Equity and Procter and Gamble.

Bob is a founding Board member and the 2007 President of the Internet Commerce Association, the largest trade association in the direct navigation industry. Bob graduated with honors from Harvard University with a BA in Economics. He also completed graduate work at Sloan Business School at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Craig Snyder CEO (No Change)
…

Sid Parfait EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
An well-known figure in the industry, Parfait joined the Internet REIT team after the company purchased his portfolio in 2005. Parfait brings strong industry depth and relationships to Internet REIT, as well as substantial expertise monetizing Internet domain names.

Parfait created and developed DropWatch.com, a subscription-based online suite of comprehensive, fast-track research and management tools for domain professionals, in addition to the popular online Google pagerank utility, PRLookup.com. Parfait is also the former SVP Marketing for Newton & Associates, a commercial debt recovery and credit consultation firm.

Adam Dicker EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
As executive vice president of iREIT, Dicker is focused on iREIT’s acquisitions, marketing, analytics, content development, and domain optimization and monetization functions.

Dicker brings extensive experience and domaining expertise to iREIT. A well-known figure in the industry, Dicker founded High Impact Sites, Inc., a company that owns thousands of high-profile domains and operates a number of active websites, including Penpals.com, Planets.com, Witchcraft.com, FirePrevention.com, Avatars.com and Download.net. Prior to his work in the domain industry, Dicker was the Network Services Manager for Quantitude, a Cendant-owned company.

Dicker is also owner of DNForum.com, the largest professional domain community discussion forum on the Internet.

Eddie Hebert VP FINANCE (ADDED)
As VP Finance, Eddie oversees iREIT’s financial planning, treasury, tax, compliance and asset management functions. Prior to joining iREIT, Eddie was VP Controller for a service technology company, Particle Drilling Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: PDRT). While at Particle Drilling Technologies, he facilitated the company’s entry into the public markets.

He began his career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen. He is a C.P.A and holds a degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

Lisa Box VP DOMAIN SALES (No Change)
…
Tim Chen VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (No Change)
…
Jacob Hammond DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS (DELETED)
As Director of Products at Internet REIT, Hammond is responsible for heading the development of the products and systems that manage Internet REIT’s domain assets. He also works in conjunction with the monetization team to ensure that content is developed on Internet REIT’s domains.

Hammond comes from a background in web development, primarily working within the domain industry.

Drake Harvey VP TECHNOLOGY (ADDED)
As VP of Technology at Internet REIT, Harvey is accountable for the technical infrastructure and is responsible for the engineering, implementation and operation of new technologies. Harvey brings extensive experience in both telecommunications operations and engineering. Most recently, Harvey spent 10 years with Level3 Communucations (Formerly Broadwing) with responsibility for a nationwide network supporting voice, data and internet services for Fortune 500 companies.

Prior experiences include deployment and operational responsibilities for large, leading edge data centers and industry leading technology roll-outs. Harvey brings a proven track record of organizational turn around and stabilization.

Harvey has a B.S. in Business Administration, Finance from University of Delaware.

John Brock GENERAL COUNSEL (No Change)
John Brock has spent the past decade serving as both in-house and outside counsel to private high-growth and public companies. His practice has focused primarily on the areas of corporate governance, finance, securities and mergers and acquisitions. John previously served as the General Counsel and Vice President of Finance to Netster.com before its acquisition by iREIT.

Prior to joining Netster.com, John practiced with the law firm of Hunton & Williams LLP.

A new domain media company seems to have emerged out of Vancouver Canada. They just launched their website and their is a lot of interesting information on it. After reading through the website, it is clear that this new media company has been in stealth mode for a while and that they are on the same scale as other Industry Giants. They own some killer domain names like Attorney.com, Cheap Travel.com, Laptop.com, Digital Camera.com, Hot Springs.com, HD TV.com, Cellular Phones.com, Religion.com, Beat.com, and Venture.com. The company does not list all their domain names they own, but we assume they have other great names as well.

On their management page they list two co-founders (Kevin Ham, Colin Yu), and as you would expect from a Media company in the Direct Navigation space, they both own their own their .COM personal names. The two co-founders were high school friends and then later both attended the University of British Columbia. Later, after college, they started this company together.

Reinvent’s mission statement page is littered with awesome domain names that act as the title of each section, Mission Plan.com, Vision Statements.com, The History.com, Great Corp.com, Innovations.com, Team Building Exercises.com, Enjoying.com, Community Outlook.com

Reinvent Technology, Inc. was formally named Host Start, but the Host Start domain still does not redirect to Reinvent yet. Some background information was provided about their stealth mode operations on one of their pages:

Our humble beginnings, in 1999, started much like many internet startups, in the living room, as opposed to the garage. Founded by a family doctor who wanted to base his medical practice on his patients and not on time or money, he started an internet business during his residency in order to build a passive income. By the time his residency was completed, the business was doing so well that he decided to run the business for another year and then go back to medicine. That has yet to happen, seven years after the fact.

He was joined in late 2000 by his long-time high school friend, who had a background in banking. The company continues to grow and all their waking hours were spent building the business, all with specific goals in mind.

With the quantity and quality of domains in their portfolio this has to be considerable and formidable company to Name Media, Demand Media, Marchex, Name Administration Media, and Internet REIT.