Igal Lichtman.
When Igal Lichtman passed away a month ago, the domain community lost an entrepreneurial pillar that was a domain mentor and a true friend.
Igal invested in a diverse variety of domain names, and engaged his genius by ensuring that his premium domain assets were backed by corporate entities.
Projects such as Jerusalem.com were not single islands of domain development; en route to the same destination was Vatican.com and other premium domain names.
Meanwhile, Igal Lichtman’s undeveloped assets included a remarkable trio of space exploration domains: NASA.com, NASA.net and NASA.org.
With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration operating from NASA.gov, how did Igal secure his valuable assets, without fear of intervention from the Space Agency?
By creating an investment fund, and a corporate entity, North American Search Authority, Igal Lichtman’s genius protected his premium domains, NASA.com, NASA.net and NASA.org; in the process, he registered a trademark for “North American Search Authority (NASA)” with the USPTO.
Registered in 2007, the “NASA” trademark was granted for “Computer services, namely, providing search engines for obtaining data on a global computer network.”
This ingenious move secured the use of the .com, .net and .org domains as pointers to monetized content, in the form of a search portal about space.
There are numerous other instances that Igal Lichtman’s intelligence, creativity and passion shone through; he will always be remembered as a remarkable entrepreneur and a loving family man.
