After the Wall Street Journal broke the name and other details about the new E-Reader from Barnes & Noble, I did some digging on the ownership history of Nook.com. It appears that the domain ownership was transferred on June 3, 2009 and it is probably not coincidence that a trademark for “Nook” was filed on June 4, 2009 by Fission Inc.

Fission Inc, a Delaware Corporation, is possibly a shell company created by B&N for hiding intellectual property. Their Wilmington, DE address has over 200 corporations and people registered at that address and suite number.

Fission Inc changed their DNS servers on Nook.com to “barnesandnoble.com” two weeks ago on October 7 which may have tipped off someone. Before Fission owned it, intellectual property company Marksmen held ownership for a few days, perhaps because they were the company brokering the deal between Fission and the domain owner.

It is possible that Nook.com was not the most expensive purchase. B&N had to go through legendary domain investor Frank Schilling for Nook.net. Frank is known for getting top dollar when selling domains.

B&N also acquired Nook.org, but no public sales data for any of the three domains is available.