The whois record for Flicker.com was last updated a few weeks ago and Yahoo now owns the domain.
Fickr.com of course is one of Yahoo’s prime properties and the 31st most visited site on the net according to Alexa.
Surprisingly the domain Flicker.com is still resolving to the former owners site.
We asked the question in a post just about a year ago why Yahoo had not purchased Flicker.com.
The domain was also discussed in a blog post by TechCrunch last year as well.
The domain has a long checked past ever since Yahoo decided to go with the “web 2.0” version rather than the correctly spelled domain.
Very smart move by Yahoo. Any idea what they paid?
Didn’t Sahar and/or his company own Flicker.com? Did they end up selling it or was there litigation involved?
I should stipulate that it was a “very smart move” only if they didn’t overpay based on the metrics.
wow, nice scoop MHB… certainly have to wonder what the final tally was 🙂
I was given a “no comment” regarding price, I assume there is a NDA associated with the transaction
Cool bit of news.
Great find.
I bet they paid a hefty amount for it.
That’s what “Cute” branding will do for you…
You’ll end up paying more than if you’d have bought the name in the first place.
Aron
so would flucker be a misspell of flicker or fuc*er. sometimes the internet can be confusing.
TechCrunch has now picked up the story:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/flickr-flicker/
Qrong spelling in your post. You wrote it Fickr.com
Fickr.com of course is one of Yahoo’s prime properties and the 31st most visited site on the net according to Alexa.
– is that intentional? ^^
Darn, I misspelled wrong my self. lol..
Wow! Very smart idea yahoo.
True of false?
ACPA extends the Lanham Act to cover infringement of a “mark that was distinctive” or “famous… *at the time of registration of the domain name*”.
flicker.com was registered as a domain name in 1998
FLICKR was registered as trademark in 2005
Does “registered” mean “first registered”? Does it include transferring to another registrar (i.e. pushing the domain)?
There’s a typo in the Ashanti response.
curios
When it comes to domains and the law there is no right or wrong answer it seems
Certainly WIPO panels have awarded domains that we originally registered prior to trademarks, some citing changes of ownership, some claiming that each renewal is another start of the “notice” period, while other have dismissed this and held for the domain owner.
In theory you are correct however and I do believe the domain holder in this case received considerable financial compensation
cheers for that mhb.
i’m just trying to see how any reputable tm attorney could see a legitimate claim under the acpa given these facts. perhaps if they had no clue how srs works?
are there published cases that defined what “registered” means in under acpa 43(d)? i’ll have to take a look at those.
unless i’m missing something obvious, a court would have to interpret the ebay seller’s sale and transfer of the domain to ashanti as the time the domain was “registered”, in order to give yahoo a legitimate acpa claim. the acpa is law, not policy. there are certain rules to statutory interpretation.
surely i am missing something here.
finnegan’s claim makes no sense.
if it did, anyone could:
1. pick some some existing high traffic, high value dictionary word domain (that could not be registered as a TM) that ends in “er”, and subtract the “e”
2. register the resulting “web 2.0” word as a domain and build a simple website
3. register a trademark for the resulting “web 2.0” word domain name
4. sue the owner of the dictionary word domain under the acpa, forcing him to transfer his generic word domain to the plaintiff, or have it forfeited, as well as to potentially pay damages, fees and costs
the techcrunch story seems to have disappeared.
Curious
I just clicked on the TechCrunch link and got the same story with a ton of comments
the june 2010 story?
i get “page not found”
i searched on the techcrunch site by topic and author (it was same author as the story last year).
not there.
it’s in google’s cache. but the link google crawled is the same as your above.
but no more story on techcrunch.
not that i can see.
maybe you have page cached in your browser?
resgister is trade mark of resulting