Apple Inc. Acquired ResearchKit.com Domain Name

Apple Inc. isn’t a huge domain name buyer for the size of company they are. They rarely register domains matching products and services announced in the fashion that companies like Amazon does. They do register some and also acquired already owned domains like iPhone.com and iCloud.com for an example and most of the time when they do acquire domains, it’s for something BIG.

Well, Apple has acquired the domain name ResearchKit.com from its past owner Synergy Technologies LLC for a currently undisclosed amount. The domain has been registered since September 2004.

The domain name transaction took place on February 12, 2015 according to whois records when the domain name changed to a “secret” domain buying service with the registrar CSC Corporate Domains registrar that Apple uses.

Apple recently announced ResearchKit, which is a medical open sourced platform and as they stated:

To develop ResearchKit, we consulted some of the leading medical institutions and foundations around the world to reimagine how medical research is conducted. Their experiences and insights helped us create a software framework tailored to the needs of modern medical researchers.

Currently, the only actual whois information connecting Apple to any ResearchKit domain names is the .us domain, which was registered on 3/9/2015:

But they also secured the following domain names on 2/7/2015 by hand registering them:

• ResearchKit.net
• ResearchKit.org
• ResearchKit.info
• ResearchKit.biz

Those domain names show the generic whois information of “CSC Corporate Domains Inc.” currently but they are Apple owned!

I did reach out to the past owners of ResearchKit.com to see what the domain name sold for and if they had any idea that Apple may be the buyers but I haven’t heard back yet at time of posting. I will update the story if or when I hear back.

Also to note… I did break the news that Kit.com has very likely sold recently as well! I can not make a connection with this domain to a specific company or individual at this point. It doesn’t instantly jump out that it’s a domain that Apple would buy, but considering the term is included in the domain they did buy, I guess there would be the potential.