Read a name's ownership history before you buy

One record, three different dangers

A name that changed hands four times in two years can mean three things, and they do not weigh the same. Either someone stole it and is moving it before anyone notices, or it carries a defect from an earlier holder, or investors simply traded it.

Theft comes first, because it can cost you the whole price. A holder who says a name was stolen can sue to recover it, and the buyer may then defend it in court.

A defect comes second. It can be a former company's trademarkTrademarkA registered right over a name inside one line of business. Owning a domain gives you no trademark, and a domain can collide with somebody else’s.Read the definition, a spam past that mail filters remember, or a rule of the company that runs the ending, and each can cost you the name or its resale.

Churn, which means how often a name changes hands, comes last. Elliot Silver reported on DomainInvesting on 17 November 2015 that 223 four-letter .com names had sold publicly twice that year, 171 of them at a profit. The report assumed that rising demand drove the resales, and added that some first deals may have fallen through. A count of owners is a prompt, not a verdict.

The theft pattern: quick changes and a low price

Andrew Allemann listed the warning signs on Domain Name Wire on 5 April 2010: run from a name that changed owners several times in the past year, and be wary of a record that suddenly changes and then moves to another registrarRegistrarThe company you buy and renew a domain through, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy. It does not own the name, it only registers it for you.Read the definition. The article adds that one sign alone is a warning, not evidence of theft, since many people buy and resell names quickly.

One lawsuit, which Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 17 September 2019, concerns 81.com. A buyer claims to have paid $360,000 for the name on 7 May 2013, and says it was stolen. The historical records Allemann read show the name at three registrars in about four months.

The records list a Japanese owner on 9 May 2013, two days after the claimed purchase, then a privacy servicePrivacy serviceA company whose name stands in the public record in place of a name’s holder. It hides the holder’s contact details and does not own the name.Read the definition on 11 July and a Chinese owner on 13 September. Allemann wrote that the name seemed out of the claimant's control for years. The article does not say how the suit ended.

The second sign is the price. Three-letter names have a floor priceFloor priceA price at which a kind of name finds a ready buyer quickly. Short names such as three-letter .com names have one.Read the definition, a level at which ready buyers take them quickly, and that makes them a favorite of thieves, Allemann wrote on Domain Name Wire on 7 October 2014. In that article's view, a good three-letter combination offered under $10,000 in 2014 meant something was wrong, and in many cases even $20,000 was too low.

Escrow protects the payment, not the title

EscrowEscrowA neutral third party that holds the buyer’s money and the domain until both sides have done their part, then completes the swap. It is how large domain sales avoid either side going first.Read the definition, or a marketplaceMarketplaceA site where owners list domains for sale and buyers make offers, such as Sedo or Afternic.Read the definition's checkout, holds your money until the name reaches your account, and then pays the seller. A name bought that way can still face a theft claim, as 509.com shows. The buyer in the case above had answered the suit, Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 8 October 2021.

In that answer, the buyer argued that the name was bought in a well-publicized auction at a recognized marketplace. That is a defense argued in court, by the buyer who paid.

The useful checks come before the money. In 2014, Allemann's advice for a liquidLiquidityHow easily a name could be sold again, and how long that would take. A name many businesses might want moves faster than one with a single plausible buyer.Read the definition name, one that sells quickly, was to read at least a year of its ownership history in a WHOISWHOISThe public record of who registered a domain and when. Most owner contact detail is hidden by privacy rules, but the dates are not.Read the definition history service, a site that keeps past copies of the record. If the owner had changed, the advice was to contact the previous owner. Allemann once narrowly avoided a stolen name that way.

Allemann's 2010 list of warning signs adds a phone call. By that list, a seller who refuses a short call on a five-figure deal is probably hiding something. Ask how and when the seller acquired the name, and then compare the answer with the record.

What sat on the name: read the archive

The Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive's copy of past web pages, shows what a name carried: a company's site, or a parking pageParked domainA registered name that shows only ads or a for-sale page instead of a site.Read the definition of ads. Dispute panels read it too. A panel deciding a complaint under the UDRPUDRPThe usual procedure for a trademark owner to claim a domain that copies their mark.Read the definition, the procedure for trademark claimsTrademark claimsA period after launch when anyone registering a trademarked word sees a warning first.Read the definition on names, may consult it, says WIPO's 2017 Overview of panel views.

A blank archive is a question, not a clean slate. The same overview says that panels have tended to view blocking the archive as neutral in itself. Blocking it to hide past pages, though, particularly once a trademark problem was raised, may support an inference that the holder was hiding abusive content.

Google had become the registrantRegistrantThe person or company the official record names as the holder of a domain. Changing the registrant can block a move to another registrar for a while.Read the definition of Goggle.com, Domain Name Wire reported on 20 October 2022, and the name's earlier pages were excluded from the Wayback Machine. The article quotes a description of the name as a typo site that some considered dangerous and that turned malicious in 2004.

The name was still on some blocklistsBlocklistA list of names that mail filters and internet providers refuse because of past spam or scams. A name can stay listed after it changes hands.Read the definition, the lists that mail filters and internet providers use to stop a name, and the writer's own provider blocked it with a scam warning. The holder had changed, but the blocklists had not.

The archive can also help a buyer. Helion.com was bought at a SnapNames auction for $9,445 in October 2012 and drew a complaint a month after that sale (Konstantinos Zournas, OnlineDomain, 28 December 2012). The panel checked the Wayback Machine: others had used the name since 1996, before the complainant's first use in 2005. The panel denied the complaint.

Read the dates as a panel reads them

A creation date belongs to the current registration, not to the name. Nominet, which runs .uk, proposed giving the oldest matching registration, such as a .co.uk, a first right to the same name directly under .uk, Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 18 June 2013. Under that proposal, a registration's date would reset if the name had ever dropped, but not if it had passed between holders.

Section 3.9 of WIPO's 2017 Overview says that a mere renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition by the same holder does not show registration in bad faith. Where an unbroken chain of possession is shown, panels typically do not treat a formal contact update as a new registration. But a transfer to a new holder is not a renewal, and a panel looks at bad faith from the day the current holder acquired the name.

So an old date counts for the holder who kept the name, while for a buyer the question starts on the day of purchase. The USPTOUSPTOThe United States Patent and Trademark Office, the public register searched to spot obvious trademark conflicts early. Searching it is a first check, never legal clearance.Read the definition and EUIPOEUIPOThe European Union Intellectual Property Office, the public register of EU trademarks. Searching it is a first check, never legal clearance.Read the definition registers show the trademarks in force, and a lawyer can read your own case.

An update date is not a purchase date either. A panel denied a complaint over Cabot.com, Elliot Silver reported on DomainInvesting on 4 April 2024. The name was registered in 1995 and, in the records Silver read, apparently had the same holder since at least 2001.

The complainant, whose mark was first used in 2009, had read a WHOIS update of February 2023 as a change of owner. The panelist answered that raw WHOIS data can be updated for many reasons, among them a nameserverNameserverThe server that answers for a domain on the internet, telling browsers and mail where to go. Changing it moves the site or the mail to another host.Read the definition change or a minor contact change.

What Unique Domains shows, and what it does not

WHOIS, on the Investor plan, reads the registryRegistryThe organisation that runs an ending, like the company behind .com. It sets the rules and the price registrars pay.Read the definition's record for one name, and the website's WHOIS gives one live lookup a day. Under Timeline, it lists the registration, the last change in the record, a recent registrar move and the expiry.

In Product, Changes in words adds what the versions we stored show: each registrar move with the registrar it came from, and whether the name dropped and was registered again. That history starts when we first read the name, and it shows no past holders, because we buy no ownership history.

In the Changes in words card, Deeper history: Domain Analysis opens the name's drawer at History for free. There you read Has a past, with the year the archive first saw the name online, A past with spam signals, or No past found, which, like any blank archive, is still a question. The pages themselves are in the Wayback Machine.

A hidden holder is slow to reach. In April 2024 registrars approved 19.16% of the requests sent through ICANNICANNThe body that sets the rules for domain names and approves new endings.Read the definition's service for hidden ownership data, and approval took 14.09 days on average (Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 16 May 2024).

Before you pay for a held name

• Look the name up in WHOIS, and write down its registration, its last change and any registrar move.
• Read at least a year of past holders in a WHOIS history service, where privacy has not hidden them.
• Walk away from a name with several owner changes in a year, and be wary of a record change followed by a registrar move.
• Compare the price with the name's last recorded sale: a price far under it is a warning.
• Ask the seller how and when the name was acquired, and ask for a phone call.
• For a liquid name, write to the previous holder before any money moves.
• Read the Wayback Machine for a former company, a page of ads or a spam past.
• Read an update date on its own as an update, never as a purchase.
• Close through escrow, knowing that it protects the payment, not the title.