Who is the secret winner of the retweet.com auction?
A solid domain & underlying technology sale has been reported on Mashable and announced by DNN; the sale occurred on Flippa – a selling platform that mainly caters to developed web sites.
The apparent sale – which still needs to be confirmed – was for a staggering $250,000 dollars. A bidder took advantage of the BIN (buy it now) price and thus leapfrogged the previous offer of $202,000.
What makes this case really interesting, is the existence of not one but two pending trademark applications for “retweet” for several months now.
Let’s look at them in more detail.
retweet: Trademark Application 1 – Filed on August 14, 2009 by Twitter Inc.
IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: transmission of messages; electronic message sending, receiving and forwarding; telecommunications services, namely, providing online and telecommunication facilities for real-time interaction between and among users of computers, mobile and handheld computers …
The current status as of March 1, 2010 indicates that “an office action suspending further action on the application has been mailed.” What that means is, that there is no final decision. Instead, the letter says:
Since applicant’s effective filing date is subsequent to the effective filing date of the above-identified application(s), the latter, if and when it registers, may be cited against this application in a refusal to register under Section 2(d) of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §1052(d).
In other words, the letter describes other pending trademark / service mark applications that are related to that by Twitter. These applications ARE NOT for “retweet” but instead for:
- tweetlaw
- tweetdealz
- tweetTV
- cotweet
- tweetnetworking
- tweetworking
- tweetdeck
- tweetphoto
- tweetmarks
As you can see, that’s quite a handful of pending applications that contain “tweet” which are considered clashing as they are in overlapping product or service classes. Looks like a clusterf@ck from here.
retweet: Trademark Application 2 – Filed on August 18, 2009 by Mesiab Labs, LLC
IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: Clothing, namely, shirts, hats, sweat shirts, jackets, pullovers, shorts
IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Providing current event news and information
The current status of September 18, 2009 indicates that “A non-final action has been mailed. This is a letter from the examining attorney requesting additional information and/or making an initial refusal. However, no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made.”
The letter itself indicates – as with Twitter’s application – that there are other pending applications and that confusion would be caused if the applicant retained the overlapping classes, in this case IC 041.
Our guess is that, given the proximity of the status update of the tm application by Twitter (March 1, 2010) the bidder of the $250,000 amount for Retweet.com is Twitter Inc. By obtaining a high-traffic domain and service closely related to their services and pending trademark application, they are adding weight to their pending “retweet” application against the second applicant. Double whammy!
By the way, follow us on http://twitter.com/domaingang for daily updates and news. 😀
Twitter. With a billion dollar valuation and huge influx of VC, $250K to them is like you or I giving the car wash guy a $100 tip. Besides if they get acquired, it all becomes a better value.
Exactly. It’d make no sense for anyone else to funnel a quarter of a million dollars into a single domain so closely tied to twitter itself 🙂
LOL @ the Chris screenshot.
How the heck did you find all the trademark application details? Good investigative work on this. I blogged about this post because I tend to agree with your speculation after reading your analysis. It would make total sense for Twitter to buy it.
Travis
Hi Travis – it’s all public info at USPTO.gov 🙂 Search for the “retweet” mark.