Company sues NBC Universal for allegedly backing out of deal to sell Women.com.
Robin Wauters at TechCrunch is reporting about a domain deal that didn’t quite get “done”, and a lawsuit filed by the buyer.
DONE! Ventures (which participated in the Toys.com auction) is suing NBC Universal for allegedly not following through with an agreement to sell Women.com and women.net.
According to the complaint, NBC Universal agreed to an exclusive brokerage agreement with Sedo to sell the domain names. Domain name broker Alan Hack alerted DONE! about the domains, and DONE! Ventures then made an offer of $1 million for the two domain names, which was supposedly accepted. DONE! says that Sedo informed it a few days later that the deal would not go through, as NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker personally vetoed the deal.
DONE! Ventures is asking for the court to enforce the deal.
It’s very difficult to sell domain names into large companies because of all of the signing-off that must occur. But I know first hand that it’s even harder to buy domains from big companies. A couple years ago I had a multi-million dollar brokerage deal in the works. Both sides agreed to the deal, but then infighting ensued at the big company that was selling the domain. The issue? Which group within the company would get credit for the sale.
This is the second high profile case of a seller backing out at Sedo to come out in the past week.
don says
interesting…I dont know what the $ level is that public traded companies are required to have a board sign off on a transaction, but have to imagine this will come down to whether the person who pushed the domains to SEDO was high ranking enough within the company for a court to say they had the explicit authority…dont see how the buyer wins on this one, again it will become a perception of value and potential future value…the paper trail would be pretty interesting, one mil to nbc seems really insignicant to sell a premium domain property.
Andrew Allemann says
NBC has sold domains through Sedo previously, so I doubt NBC can argue the person who signed off didn’t have authority. This is a case where the buyer could win for specific performance — i.e. going through with the deal.
Shuwix says
Buyer don’t cover risk for selling company inside problems.
Buyer will win domain and company can sue employee (but they won’t as that is usually just stupid excuse to step out of trade).
Henry says
bankruptcylawyers.com, trademarklawyer.com, immigrationattorney.com, criminalattorneys.com, duilawyers.com,
taxattorneys.com, and bankruptcylawyers.net for $200,000.00?
Something’s got to be wrong there.
Steve Cheatham says
Deal with corporate officers when selling domain names. Everybody else is just looking for a promotion or quick buck with corporate money. They have no actual commitment for the corporation. The corporate offices are the only ones authorized to act on a deal.
even says
big companies are always greedy