Shortly after Fund.com raked in $10 million, reportedly a record-breaker for a straight domain price, Jay Westerdal, the 30-year-old CEO of Name Intelligence, Inc., put up Harmony.com at the starting bid of $5 million, a sale that went live officially today.
Jay Westerdal CEO of Name Intelligence, Inc.
(Photo Credit: JayWesterdal.com)
“I have no doubt this is a bargain deal,” writes Westerdal at his company’s Domain Tools Blog. “The current owner is looking to raise some money for a development project and is willing to let the domain go in our private auction process.”
Commentators on the blog were immediately skeptical about the worth of the domain, some of them pricing it between $100,000 and $500,000, especially because of potential conflicts with E-Harmony and even Logitech’s Harmony remote control.
A quick search on the US Patent and Trademark Office website returns three pages of disputes surrounding the term “harmony” in various incarnations, which either speaks for or against it depending on which angle you take. Frequent dispute could signal high demand, therefore justifying a high price; it could mean the domain’s more trouble than it’s worth.
E-Harmony and Logitech could conceivably have the weakest case for litigious action given that the trademark HARMONY is actually registered by an Israeli flower farm called Danziger. Danziger did not respond to request for comment as to whether or not the company would legally pursue the buyer of harmony.com.
Domain disputes are often resolved in court, and sometimes they result in the domain being handed over to the trademark holder. Other times, a domain speculator is able to sell the domain for a substantially higher price. This could be the case if the word “harmony” is deemed to be too generic. Business.com, for example, sold in 1999 for $7.5 million, and was resold with the site that was built upon it in 2007 for $345 million.
Westerdal did not respond to request for comment about how the sale was progressing or whether he thought there could be an eventual legal dispute over the domain name. Other variations using the word harmony are on sale for considerably less, ranging from $5 to just under $2,000.
Before Fund.com, the record-breaking domain sale price was Porn.com, which sold for $9.5 million in 2007, but never actually closed. The year 2007 was a record-breaking year in general with Diamond.com selling for $7.5 million, Beer.com selling for $7 million, and Asseenontv.com and Seo.com both selling for about $5 million.
