Alan informed us last night, that the domain RomneyRyan.com not only ended up being unsold on Flippa, but it has now been blacklisted on Sedo.
We brought the news about the existence of RomneyRyan.com, long before it was listed on any marketplace.
Alan’s attempt to list a “Romney & Ryan” domain on Sedo resulted in a message that a trademark complaint had been received and the domain could not be listed on the Sedo marketplace.
The biggest domain marketplace on earth, has a known policy on domain names of politicians, particularly those of American presidential candidates.
RomneyRyan.com is thus removed from Sedo, but Romney-Ryan.us is still listed. There are more than 300 “Romney” domains, most of them intended to refer to Mitt Romney.
In a recent DomainGang poll, 63% of respondents said they are actively registering political domains.
I can understand why Sedo doesn’t want to be involved. The name has received a lot of publicity and could be viewed by some people (right or wrong) as someone squatting on a name and demanding a large sum to sell it back to the campaign. Sure Sedo might get a commission, but they risk bad publicity. While I don’t blame them, they should just say to the seller that they don’t want to list it and not say anything about trademarks (obviously doesn’t violate trademark imo).
I think the best forum for a sale would be eBay. I wouldn’t say that about most names, but it has mass appeal to those outside of domaining and this is a site that everyone is already familiar with. If I owned it I wouldn’t sit on this name very long, I think it is worth more right now than it ever will be again.
Sedo just did the same thing with me for my domain AnyoneButHillary.com.