It’s short and easy to remember, but how much will someone be willing to pay for the domain name
Law.bz?
The web site
flippa.com is offering the one-word domain name for auction with a suggested reserve price of $9,000. However as of March 13 only one bid of $100 had been placed. There are 15 days left to go before the auction period ends.
John McKeown, a partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto who does work in the area of intellectual property claims on the Internet says it may not be of much interest to law firms but other legal suppliers could find value in the
law.bz domain.
“I’m not sure a lawyer would be interested but there may be other people operating related businesses that it may have some value to them,” says McKeown. “Lawyers would want something associated with their specific brand but for people offering their products to lawyers it may have more interest. Or perhaps someone starting a solo practice might think it’s right for them, but how much is a person like that going to pay for it? Not a lot.”
McKeown said he couldn’t comment on the potential value of the name. On the auction page for
law.bz Flippa has stated that it has been appraised by domain registration site Epik LLC for $29,701.
While it is a domain that would be easy to remember, Mark Hayes of Hayes eLaw LLP in Toronto says the .bz domain name is not as good as generic top-level domain names including .biz.
In fact .bz is the Internet country code top-level domain for Belize. At one point .bz domains were being marketed by an American company as standing for “business” and reportedly took legal action against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in an attempt to block the .biz domain as unfair competition. ICANN argued the lawsuit was without merit.
“It’s kind of a secondary TLD but the law URL is pretty powerful. You might see a law firm interested in it for promotional purposes, perhaps for a blog or a even a publisher might be interested in in it. For an investment of less than $10,000 it might be worthwhile,” says Hayes.
