Compaq Pays $3.5M For Address

A California man struck it rich by selling a Web site address to Compaq Computer Corp. for $3.35 million, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday.

Quoting unidentified sources, the newspaper said Compaq paid Jack Marshall of San Jose one of the highest prices ever for a Web site, in this case, www.altavista.com.

The deal settles a two-year fight between Marshall and the computer giant, which owns the Alta Vista Internet search engine.

"I believe this is the largest known figure for a domain name transaction," said Edwin Hayward, who runs www.igoldrush.com, a Web site that tracks such purchases.

The trade in Web addresses is not unusual, but most addresses are sold for far lower prices. Speculators buy popular names for $100 and then sell the addresses to corporations for much higher prices.

In 1996, a court ruled against the purchase of trademarked names, but generic names remain fair game.

Earlier this month, Microsoft Corp. agreed to pay $5 million to a small, now-defunct software company from the Chicago area that said Microsoft stole from it the name of Internet Explorer, the name of browser software which Microsoft has heavily promoted for three years.

The Alta Vista name wasn't trademarked when Marshall bought the rights in January 1994 for his startup company, AltaVista Technology.

In November 1995, Digital Equipment Corp., now owned by Compaq, launched a search engine called Alta Vista. Because it didn't own the Alta Vista address, it was located at www.altavista.digital.com.

But the address was confusing and many searchers ended up at Marshall's site, overloading his computer.

He agreed to sell the trademark to Digital but kept the right to use the name on software and his Web site.

However, late in 1996, Digital sued Marshall for the rights to www.altavista.com on grounds Marshall had violated the earlier agreement by failing to state that his site was not the Alta Vista search engine.

In March 1997, a federal judge in Boston told Marshall to change his logo and to add a disclaimer but didn't rule on the domain name itself.

The Chronicle quoted unidentified sources as saying that, in addition to the money, Marshall won a permanent link from the Alta Vista search engine to his new Web site, www.photoloft.com.

On Aug. 31, Marshall will shut down his site and turn over the name.