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“My
original plan in going to law school was to get a degree so I
could open up my own office, “hang a shingle” so to speak, and
represent little guys that needed help. At law school I also
started developing this idea for an online network for small
solo-practicing lawyers who could work together and share a common
infrastructure. I had no desire to work for big
corporations. I ended up doing pretty well, however, and got
interviews with all the “big firms” that were offering the
biggest salaries. This was too enticing for me to pass up and I figured it
wouldn’t hurt to get a good job, earn a decent salary, and go
out on my own later,” Goldberger said.
“In
1992, I began work for one of Philadelphia’s top firms, Pepper,
Hamilton & Scheetz – but the thought of ultimately having
the freedom to go out on my own was never far from my mind. In
1994, I had heard of Compuserve and AOL and revisited my idea for
the lawyer online network. My idea was to be kind of an AOL
just for lawyers. I came up with the name ESQwire and filed
a trademark application. The Hearst Corporation that owned
Esquire Magazine opposed my trademark but someone said I should
get the ESQwire.com domain name. So I did that and used Microsoft
Front Page to build my first web site. The site said:
ESQwire, Your Firm – away from firm!” and had this
introductory note on the site:
ESQ.wire
™ - - pronounced esk-wire - will provide virtual law firm
support services, legal information services and products to
enable attorneys to practice law anywhere on the planet with the
simple click of a mouse. We are in the early stages of
development. If you would like to be a part of this revolutionary
virtual legal community as either a legal services provider or as
a participating attorney, e-mail Ari Goldberger
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Clipping
from the National Law Journal detailing
Goldberger's battle with the Hearst Corporation |
Once
Hearst learned of this, they filed a lawsuit against me in Federal
Court in Manhattan. I knew this was big and was going to be
some sort of an opportunity. I was lucky that my law firm allowed
me to spend time at work on this case. I was living in Cherry
Hill, New Jersey at the time and set-up a web site from my home. Hearst
sued me in New York. One of the first things you learn
in law school is a concept called “personal jurisdiction.”
In order to be hauled into a court, the court must have
jurisdiction over the defendant – meaning you must either reside
where the court is or have some kind of “minimum contacts”
with the state."
"Here, Hearst said there was jurisdiction
because they could access the web site from New York. But of
course, as I argued, you could access the website anywhere in the
world, which means any court in the world could have jurisdiction
over any web site in the world – a position which would make the
concept of jurisdiction obsolete with respect to the Internet.
I prevailed on that argument and Hearst and I ultimately settled the
case, enabling me to retain the domain name. The case (which has
now been cited in 374 other court cases) ended
up getting me a lot of recognition and domain owners began
contacting me to help them with their domain disputes,”
Goldberger said.
The
case also opened up new windows of opportunity in the business
world for Goldberger. “I was contacted in the spring of 1997 by
an Internet start-up known as iName (which ultimately became
Mail.com). They were buying up a lot of great domain names and
were looking for a lawyer to help them protect them, as well as
someone to help with the overall business. This sounded perfect
for me. I could be a lawyer, and also participate in the
business end. At the same time, they agreed to allow me to
operate ESQwire on the side.”
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If
this sounds like a marriage made in heaven, Goldberger said that
is exactly what it was. “Mail.com was a wonderful experience.
As VP of Business Development, I had the opportunity to come up
with new business ideas, negotiate deals with huge companies like NBC,
CBS, New York Times, NFL, Paramount
and Universal Studios. I
learned a great deal from this experience and am very thankful to
the folks at Mail.com for giving me that opportunity. While I
was there, I made contact with and began assisting many of the
pioneers in the domain business including ProDomains (now
Digimedia), Reflex Publishing, Rick Schwartz and
several others." |
“One
of the great things that came out of Mail.com was becoming
associated with the founder of Anything.com, who was referred to
me by their Best Domains domain brokerage business. Anything.com has amassed one of the best domain name portfolios in
the industry, with names like medicine.com, marketing.com,
children.com, ticket.com, design.com, land.com,
stocks.com,
songs.com and hundreds more. The founder is one of my best friends and one of the
most loyal and trustworthy people I know and I owe much of what I
have achieved to our relationship,” Goldberger said.
After
seeing Mail.com grow from 12 to 600 employees, Ari left in April
2000. “I continued running ESQwire, having built-up a
client base of domainers, with my most significant being
Anything.com. However, I was concerned that, because of the
collapse of the Dotcom bubble, I would not be able to maintain a
steady income that had been based in part on representation and
handling escrow for domain sales. Later that year, I arranged for
one of the earliest parking deals with then Goto.com. Goto
put up a basic page on Anything.com’s domains and gave us a
small share of the advertising revenue earned. We later
allowed other domainers to be a part of the program and I formally
founded SmartName in October 2003 as a
Yahoo! syndication
partner.”
While
the ESQwire.com decision was the one that put Goldberger on the
map as a domain attorney, it was just the first in what would
become a long string of successes. “I made it a point to handle
a large number of cases in 2000-2001 at a very low fee in order to
get a bunch of winning decisions I could cite, as well as build-up
a good body of law. Any victory for a domainer is gratifying
but if I had to point to a couple that were especially important
they would be NewZealand.com and Mexico.com,” Goldberger said.
“NewZealand.com
was the first case of a country trying to claim its domain. The
owner’s entire business could have collapsed if this case was
lost, so the pressure was on big time. It was a wonderful
victory, particularly since the panel found that the Complainant
engaged in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. The funny thing is
that the case was in the name of HRM, the Queen of
England, so
CNN.com had the headline: “British Queen Loses Out on
Cyber Name.” Mexico.com was another case where an individual had
invested a lot and worked very hard could have lost an entire
business if I had not won.”
| Goldberger’s
venture into domain parking has also been a winner, with
SmartName.com drawing high marks for the exceptional degree of landing
page customization made available to their clients. “One of the
principle things we focused on was giving domainers the ability to
make their pages look like real sites. I always believed it
harmed the long-term value of a domain if it just had a parking
page, which lessened the chance for repeat visits and also
discouraged users from sticking around and clicking on ads."
"We have built our reputation by focusing on making sites look
nicer and treating domainers as truly the king of their domain. Lawrence Fischer, who was one of the early domainers from the Goto
days has helped (as VP Business Development) in our mission to be
one of the best PPC companies out there. Lawrence has an
amazing sense for what makes a good domain and we operate as a
great team. He is a great friend and our families have also
become close including our boys,” Goldberger said.
|
Lawrence
Fisher
VP Business Development
SmartName.com |
The
domain business continues to move at warp speed and new issues
continually boil to the top. One in particular has special
significance to attorneys like Ari. “The biggest changes in the
legal space include an increased focus on typo-squatting of
trademark misspelled domains. I was surprised how long
the trademark community has tolerated this, with millions of
dollars in advertising being spent on ads appearing on trademark
domains that the trademark owners could get for free if they owned
domains. The increased focus on PPC and recognition of the value
of type-in traffic has increased the heat on domainers and PPC
companies alike to stay away from trademarks. With my
background in law I have always been uncomfortable with trademark
typos and we have worked to stay away from that sort of
traffic,” Goldberger said.
Ari
has come a long way from collecting Coke bottles on the beach for a
few pennies. Like many who have gained business success, he has
just about everything he could wish for except more spare time.
“Like many in this field, I spend a lot of time glued to a
desk chair in front of a computer screen. However, I try to get in
some bicycling every day and hope to get into some longer rides
this summer. I enjoy spending time with my wife and two boys (ages
6 and 9).
I like going to flea markets and looking for “old stuff” with
my kids. I also enjoy classic movies. As everyone
knows, the irony of the Internet and new technology is that it was
supposed to give us more leisure time. The punch line is that the
technology has just made it easier for work to follow us wherever
we go.” Goldberger said.
Goldberger
family June 2006 (left to right at back): Ari's father Adam,
sister Leora, Ari, mother Ruth and wife Sharon.
Ari & Sharon's
two sons are in front.
Earlier
this year Ari got some trusted and much needed help when his big
sister Leora agreed to come on board as his assistant at ESQwire. “I have worked the past six years with no help. I answered
the phones, did the billing, typing, copies, everything.
It's been crazy. I've been talking about hiring help for a
few years but the problem is that I'm so busy that I can't take
the time to train anyone. My sister has been working for
attorneys for over 25 years so I always knew she could be a great
help. My life is much more relaxed now as I can go on vacation
and know someone I trust is back at the shop. Looking back I
don't know how I did it without her!" Goldberger said.
Ari
reserved special praise for his wife Sharon whom he
met at law school where she was the best friend of one of
his fellow law students. "It's been an interesting
ride for Sharon to say the least. She's had to put up with
my long work hours. Our first son was only about 3 months
old when I was offered the job at Mail.com. We had just
just purchased our first house the year before and had to
sell it, pack up everything and move to an apartment in
New York."
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"Sharon
was an entrepreneur too, leaving our comfortable, stable
life in Cherry Hill behind and supporting me in joining
this start-up in the new unknown territory of the online
world. Sharon did all the banking for ESQwire, even though
she had her hands full raising our first born in the big
city in a one-bedroom apartment, and giving birth to our
second son before we packed our bags and headed back to
Cherry Hill."
"I don't think I could have succeeded in my
endeavors without her love and support along the way. We
will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary next month and
I hope my gift will be to spend more time with her and the
boys. Nothing is more important than that!"
Goldberger said. |
Sharon
& Ari Goldberger |
Of
course it is easier to put endless hours into your work when you love what you do and Ari does. There’s only
one other profession he thinks he might enjoy as much and that is
filmmaking. When Schindler’s List came out, Goldberger
got a first hand look at the power of film. “I was very pleased
when Spielberg made Schindler's List and told the story of the
horrible experience our people suffered, particularly since it was
so close to my parents’ experience,” Goldberger said.
“My
mom was in that camp and knew a number of people who were saved by
Schindler. Their neighbor, Bill Rosner, in Vineland was the
youngest of the Rosner brothers, who were depicted in the
orchestra in the movie. Bill played the bugle in the camp. The movie really got a lot of people talking about the horrors
that were kind of kept under the rug for 50 years, and the movie
brought comfort to my parents and other survivors."
When I
learned that Steven Spielberg created a foundation to videotape
the testimony of survivors I volunteered immediately. The USC
Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education
collected some 50,000 professional quality video interviews of survivors. I conducted about a dozen interviews for
the foundation, which was a very rewarding experience.
People must know about what happened so that this tragedy can
never be repeated,” Goldberger said.
*****
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