Thomson Reuters has signed an agreement to purchase MarkMonitor. This acquisition of MarkMonitor, based in San Francisco, California, is said to “strengthen the broad portfolio of intellectual property solutions from Thomson Reuters”. The completion of the acquisition is, of course, subject to standard regulatory approvals, and the actual terms of the transaction were not disclosed publicly. [Read more…]

In the past 24 hours, Microsoft has registered 43 new domain names–all related to their new Microsoft Surface tablet. These new domain registrations were done a day after their announcement of this new product. [Read more…]

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has just registered 11 new domain names in the past 24 hours. Usually moves like this indicate upcoming projects, especially because Wikipedia does not have a history of regularly registering new domain names. [Read more…]

There is what I would call an intellectual property domain name scam that companies are still falling for–and the individuals behind the scam have been successfully running it for over 10 years now. If you are a domain name owner (and most likely you do own a domain name), then you may at some point receive an email from someone in China telling you that someone is trying to register a domain name that is similar to your intellectual property. They want you to reply to them, so you can then pay them ridiculous fees to register useless domain names. [Read more…]

Did Apple just reveal the name of the next Apple iPhone, the iPhone 4N via a new domain name registration? Based on whois records, Apple has apparently purchased the domain name iPhone4n.com: [Read more…]