Prior to today, most businesses shied away from registering relevant .info domains. Since the .info TLD never caught on with consumers, most organizations passed on the chance to register keyword and brand-related domains with the .info extension. The advantage to buyers here is that keyword domains are considered generic – they are protected from most Trademark infringement litigation because common terms like “tax” are not protected for any single party. So one could build an entire brand around a popular and relevant keyword, as long as they were willing to use a .info extension.

In all fairness, .info domain names do not currently carry the same credibility of their .com, .org and .net counterparts. Very few organizations run successful primary websites using a domain that ends in .info – and it is also rare for companies to use .info domains as secondary websites for data libraries. But this could change after today’s Exclusive Auction.

IP Asset Group will keep you updated to see what domains fetch the highest prices. The real key here: Will this auction propel .info domains from a sideshow within the domain-name community, turning .info TLDs into into a prime-time player?

GoDaddy pushes their .INFO TLD Auctions through Facebook and social media.

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Is Protecting Your Brand For Small Businesses for you? In this class, we will cover the basics of Intellectual Property law, with a focus on Trademark and Copyright protection for small business owners.

• How does a consulting firm protect their work they produce for clients?
• What does a local restaurant or shop need to think about when they are coming up with a brand name?
• Why do software companies need to use special wording for license agreements?
• Are domain names protected by Trademark Law?
• How does the concept of “Open Source” within the software world present challenges to tech start-ups?
• Who does a small business need to call when they have IP Law concerns?

Scott will bring in examples of how many prominent local companies utilize their Intellectual Property, and how some won (and lost) legal battles to keep the rights to use their brand, image and even their name. By the end of the session, students will have a greater understanding of Intellectual Property Law, and specifically, how they can best use Trademark and Copyright strategy to protect their brand, their services and their unique products. No formal background in IP Law is needed to attend.

This lecture will run for 90 minutes, including discussion and open questions.

For a limited time, new students at the Grove Academy may attend their first class for FREE. Using coupon code, “HOLIDAY” during the checkout for Grove Academy classes waives all tuition and administrative fees. This promotion applies to many current Grove Academy classes, and is not limited to my session on Intellectual Property Law and Brand Management.

IP Asset Group, LLC is thankful to our friends and extended family at The Grove. Co-working at The Grove, including launching IP Asset Group from their office has been an absolute pleasure. Special Thanks to Chris Jacobs for his help and support in the creation of “Protecting Your Brand For Small Businesses” at the Grove Academy, and for organizing the Grove Academy’s holiday promotion.

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Old policy: Place one bid, and the auction will extend for 4 hours. If you are outbid (Even by a nominal amount) the auction will end while you are sleeping/working.

New policy: Potential buyer places their maximum bid. The current bid on the auction is increased by a nominal interval ($5) and the buyer’s maximum bid is increased each time a new bid is placed. This happens until another bidder bids an amount higher than the first bidder.

Check out Flippa’s Blog for more information about their new automatic bid management policy.

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Beyond a basic loss of freedoms on the Internet, SOPA could hurt businesses by 1) making it more difficult to legally distribute content and 2) thereby increase the total cost to authors, distributors & consumers (if distribution was still possible). The increased costs will harm profits and drive down business valuations along with the value of the IP and content itself – if a song, or digital file becomes increasingly difficult to get into the hands of consumers, the author’s market reach becomes limited very quickly.

Joel Hruska outlines How SPOA Could Actually Break The Internet in a recent article on ExtremeTech. The current language in SOPA puts the burden of preventing infringment on the ISPs – the companies that provide internet access directly to consumers. If ISPs are tasked with blocking infringing content going to their customers, how will they determine what is and isn’t the original source? How will ISPs know if a given piece of content has an open or restrictive license? Would the creation of a “blacklist” for IP infringers be realistic? And what would such a blacklist do to existing traffic (legal or otherwise) online? SOPA calls for extreme solutions, with no easy way to implement them without major disruptions to all traffic online.

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I installed Facebook Developer months ago so I could try out the new timeline. I don’t like the layout view – it messes with the order in which content is posted, and I much prefer the chronological order found in the current (soon to be phased out) personal pages. The large banner at the top reminds me of MySpace – a site that died when looks overtook content and users abandoned it in droves.
What concerns me most here is usability – will people embrace the new “timeline” and fill in their own history or will this lead to more confusion. Does the past really matter on a social network, when people are living from one status update to the next, from tweet to tweet? -SAS

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Pfizer isn’t going out of business because of the Lipitor patent’s expiration. Pfizer has other profitable drugs in their catalog, and many new ones on the radar. But Pfizer’s Lipitor strategy going forward needs to be done in a way that they maintain profits while others enter the market.

It is unclear how Pfizer will keep Lipitor sales high – the drug is in high demand, but insurance carriers will likely switch coverage to favor less expensive generic variants of the medicine. Cutting the price of the drug will help, but may not do much to prevent many alternatives from entering the field. -SAS

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