According to a press release issued today:
“DONE Ventures, LLC has added domain name broker, Sedo, LLC, to its lawsuit over the domain names Women.com and Women.net.”
Sedo is a business unit of Sedo Holding AG (XETRA: SDO.DE ), headquartered in Cologne, Germany, with US operations based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Sedo.com is tracked by our DomainStock Index)
The complaint, filed in Federal Court last week, states that Sedo accepted an offer, on behalf of its client, NBC Universal, to sell the domain names Women.com and Women.net for $1,000,000.
DONE! filed suit against NBC in June, 2010 for breaching the agreement by refusing to complete the transaction.
“Sedo told us we had a deal,” DONE! Ventures CEO Benjamin L. Padnos said. “There’s no confusion around ‘Congratulations, the offer has been accepted’, as they told me on May 24, 2010.
“However, NBC Universal’s court filings indicate they never authorized Sedo to bind the transaction. So, either Sedo needs to help me enforce NBC’s agreement, or they misrepresented their authority.”
“You couldn’t have a clearer set of facts” said John Kristensen of Strange & Carpenter, attorney for DONE! “DONE! made an offer which Sedo, the agent, accepted. They led my client to believe they were NBC’s authorized representatives. Agency law is very, very clear on this: Sedo is responsible for completing the transaction.”
A trial date of December 13 has been set by the Honorable Judge S. James Otero of the US District.”””
I checked out the allegations contained in the complaint and they are worth a read:
“At all times, Sedo held itself out as the broker for the NBC Defendants, with authority to sell the domains.
On May 21, 2010, Mr. Padnos made an offer of $1,000,000 for the domain names Women.com and Women.net.
“”Sedo purported to be communicating with the NBC Defendants about the transaction.
Within a few hours of Mr. Padnos’ offer, Mr. Gabriel sent Mr. Padnos the following email: “Ben and Alan, The offer has been made to my contact. He said he is going to get back to me as soon as possible.” Plaintiff is informed and believes that Mr. Gabriel’s contact was NBC Universal’s Senior Vice-President of Business Development John Curbishley.”
“On May 24, 2010, through its agent, Mr. Gabriel, NBC accepted DONE!’s offer. Gabriel’s email acceptance stated the following: ” Congratulations! The offer for Women.com has been accepted!” There was no mention that Plaintiff’s offer was rejected. There was no mention of a “counter offer.” There was no communications that any additional material terms needed to be agreed upon. At all times, Mr. Gabriel and Mr. Padnos referred to both domains women.com and women.net collectively as “women.com.”
“On May 27, 2010, Mr. Padnos was contacted by Mr. Gabriel and was told that, “Jeff Zucker has overruled the transaction” and that the deal was off. Mr. Gabriel confirmed Sedo had sold domains for NBC Universal in the past and that “this was the first time this type of thing had ever happened.” NBC told Gabriel that he had “earned his commission.”
“On June 15,2010, Sedo’s Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel, Jeremiah Johnston, admitted to Plaintiff that: Sedo “definitely intends to be compensated for our time and services” involved with the transaction; that it is Sedo’s “standard practice to seek our commission fee when a party refuses to fulfill their obligation”; Sedo did their “best to reach out to NBC to explain and encourage them to follow through with the transaction”
“Plaintiff is informed and believes the NBC Defendants contends that Sedo did not have authority to enter into the contract that is subject of this action.”
“Sedo misrepresented to DONE! what were the material terms of the transaction to the NBC Defendants, and misrepresented to the NBC Defendants what were the material terms of the transaction to the NBC Defendants.”
“Sedo knew these representations pertaining to the material terms of the Agreement were not true.”
“Nevertheless, Sedo proceeded to inform Sedo of incorrect material terms regarding the Agreement.”
“DONE! justifiably relied on Sedo’s representation that its offer was accepted.”
“As a direct and proximate result of DONE! ‘s reliance on the statements by Sedo, Plaintiff has been damaged in an amount of at least $10,043,072.00.”””
Of course that is all contained in the plaintiff’s allegation in his amended complaint.
We will see how Sedo.com answers this suit and it will be interesting to see how this suit plays out.
so, if SEDO will lose this sue, the company should be sold to pay $10M
No, they should be forced to buy a great domain from their competition.
Like your goo3d.tv domain listed on Afternic for $10 million.
Lol.
@SL
why not?
IF someday the Google TV will become as popular as its S.E. with two billions of users, the value of Goo3D.TV could reach several times this value!
LOL^10
BreakingNewsBlog.mobi – $699,000
@LS
mobile phones (breaking) news may soon reach 3+ billions of users 🙂
I have read many stories about how Sedo representatives have misrepresented a client who’s behalf they are negotiating on, generally been neglectful and screwed over this person or that person in the course of making some transaction. Prior it’s always been on a much smaller scale. The question begs: If they are acting that careless with a transaction that sizable and with clients that high profile, what kind of carelessness and neglect are they showing towards smaller clients, who don’t have the resources to pursue legal recourse? Maybe this is the reality check they need to get their priorities in order.
I think that . TV is an interesting TLD and that their selling prices should be higher than today
what . TV domains need to boost their selling prices is a big sale of a premium . TV domain acquired by a big and well known domainer or (BEST) by a giant IT company or TV network like Microsoft, CNN, Amazon, etc. for $xx,xxx,xxx
so, if you own . TV domains, cross your fingers to hope that this big sale will happen soon 🙂
I believe that the magnitude of this type of mistake should definitely be corrected on Sedo’s part because the Sedo broker dropped the ball and still got “their” commissions while damage had be done to the Complainant. How much damage we will have to find out.
@my global website has listed with Afternic:
TheMostExpensiveDomainNameInTheUniverse dot com only $100,000.000!!!
Why don’t you unplug your computer and go out for some fresh air…………….
@Alan
The Most Expensive Domain Name In The Universe MUST BE The Most Expensive Domain Name In The Universe and can’t have a cheaper price! 🙂
@Karl
no matter what is today’s ranking of . TV domains and sites… if a big . TV sale will happen, the . TV domains will become much more popular and sold at higher prices
I’ll be watching what comes of this. Will be interesting to see how Sedo’s buyer and seller contracts hold-up under scrutiny and whether NBC backed-out in violation or whether Sedo over-stepped their authority…although it doesn’t sound like it.
In either case, while causing headaches for all parties it’s also great story about every day business and domains, and any buzz that substantiates the value of domains is great for domain investors. Think about it. A $1 million offer is accepted then the owner & seller (NBC, a media giant) backs out forcing the jilted buyer to sue for damages to the tune of $10 million. I wanna know what happens!
So DONE loses out on a 1 million dollar deal and is damaged to the tune of 10 million. OK! They are DONE all right, like dinner. While they obviously suffered a damage, proving that it amounted to 10 million is going to be difficult
Done
I looks like to me that DONE is claiming they had a deal on these domains at $1M.
They are asking for the court to order the Seller to go ahead and sell the domain and for damages for the delay.
After all a particular domain like women.com is a rare commodity.
what was nbc doing parking and auctioning domains?
a corporate domainer? so much for “domain speculators”. every media company is a potential domainer.
the domain was at sedo for a year.
i remember the high hopes for women.com (ivillage). years ago. i’ll bet it’s been a loss.
i’ll bet ivillage is thinking maybe it’s worth more as a type-in, to be sold off to domainers. whether they were ready to sell, whether they understood how sedo works, i’m not sure. but i’ll bet they were curious.
=speculators. (cadna and those with similar attitudes take note)
@MB
Yes women.com is a rare commodity however the lawsuit seems to confirm the notion that time is much more valuable than money. If the name is worth a million at the beginning of the month and 10 million at the end of it DONE may want to drag this out in the hopes that when its all said and done the name will be worth 100 million.
The 10 million number is a scare tactic. Even if successful their cause is worth no where near that amount, not even close.
Done
Well its been way more than a month from the time the plaintiff says there offer was accepted and the time this goes to trial.
It may well be years.
You could make the argument that women.com is worth substantially more than $1M and NBC in backing out of the deal seems to agree. After all it wouldn’t be the 1st time that someone sold a domain name under its real market worth (hell I do it all the time).
So you could argue the domain was worth $5M at the time and NBC just agreed to accept $1M.
Your damage is based on FMV not what you agreed to pay.
I don’t know the “damages” but I can image a very good argument that the damages are far in excess of the agreed upon sales price.
It would also depend on whether either of the parties agreed to the SEDO Terms of Service/contract. That has some very strong language limiting SEDO’s liability.