Today I discovered that the domain name iPad.net has went to public auction on a $7,500 USD bid at the domain name aftermarket service Sedo.com with the reserve being met. View iPad.net Auction Here.

As we all know, Apple Inc. has recently launched the iPad and Apple does not own the matching domain name iPad.com or the .net for that matter. The iPad.net domain name was first registered 5/15/2003. The domain name auction will end April 13, 2010 at approx 5:12 PM EST.

iPad.net Domain Name Auction at Sedo.com

Above is a screen shot from the auction page on Sedo for the iPad.net domain name. Clearly there is a risk with trademark violations for the new buyer, so we will see what happens. On the flip side, we will see if Apple joins in for the domain name even though it is not the "king" .com domain. Apple already ranks #1 for natural search results on Google for the search term ipad using a category off of the flagship domain name apple.com/ipad . This covers the "search" part of traffic but doesn’t cover the all important direct navigation side of traffic without owning the iPad.com domain. The .net according to the Sedo listing is getting about 1,648 monthly unique visitors, likely from direct navigation as well.

I wrote about the iPad.com domain name a couple times and traffic has skyrocketed for the .com since the announcement of the iPad and proves that direct navigation traffic does happen! Brand protection is also important and owning the exact match domain to the product IMO is very important. Owning the .net helps due to further brand protection and some traffic, but the .com is the most important.

So what do you think the iPad.net domain name will end at auction for? Do you think Apple will be in the bidding?

Side Note: the last public whois record shows that BuyDomains.com (aka WebReg, RareNames) was the owner of the iPad.net domain before it went to whois privacy protected on 2-2-2010. The domain name clearly could have sold on or around 2-2-2010 and may not be owned by BuyDomains.com any longer (this is my educated guess). If you were to use the "Meet The Seller" feature on Sedo, it shows the seller has NO activity seller rating and this would not be the case if BuyDomains.com still owned it as they are a very active seller even on Sedo. So it is very likely iPad.net may sell twice in the past couple of months. If it did sell on or about 2/2/2010, the sale was kept private as I did not see it reported any place.