The Prisoner of Sex.com
Gary Kremen started Match.com but ended up with chump change. Then he got caught up in Sex.com, where success left him lying on his back in the gutter.
By Chris O'Brien
It's a typically sunny day in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Gary Kremen is standing on the back patio of the mansion that's a monument to his greatest success - and his worst failure.
A sleepy suburb 15 miles north of San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe is the richest community in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. Even by local standards, Kremen's seven-bedroom home is swank: It has a swimming pool, an in-ground hot tub, a tennis court, and a volleyball sandpit, all set against rolling acres of lemon groves.
Kremen won the house in a lawsuit over the domain name Sex.com. In November 2000, at the end of a three-year legal battle, a federal judge ruled that Stephen Cohen had stolen the domain by forging a letter from Kremen's company to Network Solutions. Cohen was ordered to return Sex.com to Kremen and pay him $65 million in damages. (Cohen appealed, and in June of this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.) In the meantime, Cohen had fled the country, so all Kremen got as compensation was this California mansion and a derelict house on the US-Mexico border. Even so, Kremen figured he'd found his winning lottery ticket. Under Cohen, Sex.com had been taking in $500,000 a month selling banner ads to other online porn sites.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/sex_com.html
Gary Kremen started Match.com but ended up with chump change. Then he got caught up in Sex.com, where success left him lying on his back in the gutter.
By Chris O'Brien
It's a typically sunny day in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Gary Kremen is standing on the back patio of the mansion that's a monument to his greatest success - and his worst failure.
A sleepy suburb 15 miles north of San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe is the richest community in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. Even by local standards, Kremen's seven-bedroom home is swank: It has a swimming pool, an in-ground hot tub, a tennis court, and a volleyball sandpit, all set against rolling acres of lemon groves.
Kremen won the house in a lawsuit over the domain name Sex.com. In November 2000, at the end of a three-year legal battle, a federal judge ruled that Stephen Cohen had stolen the domain by forging a letter from Kremen's company to Network Solutions. Cohen was ordered to return Sex.com to Kremen and pay him $65 million in damages. (Cohen appealed, and in June of this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.) In the meantime, Cohen had fled the country, so all Kremen got as compensation was this California mansion and a derelict house on the US-Mexico border. Even so, Kremen figured he'd found his winning lottery ticket. Under Cohen, Sex.com had been taking in $500,000 a month selling banner ads to other online porn sites.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/sex_com.html