Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Patent Kinetics puts Cold.com domain name on the auction block

By Mass High Tech Staff

Intellectual property firm Patent Kinetics LLC reports that it has started an auction for the domain name Cold.com with a $1 million minimum bid. The auction is accepting sealed bids through November 14 at 5 p.m., with the closing sale intended by early December.
 
High-value domain names — particularly four-letter names such as Fund.com, which garnered almost $10 million — number few in 2008, according to Watertown-based Patent Kinetics. The IP strategy, evaluation and brokerage company counts among this year’s high-value domains Diamond.com and Business.com ($7.5 million each), AsSeenOnTV.com ($5.1 million), Vodka.com and CreditCheck.com ($3 million each) and Rebate.com ($1 million).

News of the auction may be of interest to some local domain name brokers and direct navigation businesses.

Cambridge-based Sedo.com LLC is a broker of domain names. Sedo, which stands for Search Engine for Domain Offers, was founded in 2000, and is majority-owned by AdLINK Group, part of German United Internet AG.

In January, Sedo made a minority investment in DomainsBot, an Italian Internet domain name search company. And in June 2007, it bought the domain name broker website GreatDomains from VeriSign Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

Internet Real Estate Group, founded seven years ago, launches generic sites complete with content. The business is based on a practice known as direct navigation, in which users type generic, common names such as software.com, to find information online.