International Group Sues Over .com Management

The World Association of Domain Name Developers has filed a lawsuit in a California court against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign over a deal recently reached between the two organizations. After resolving a dispute over VeriSign’s Site Finder service, which directed users who mistyped URLs to VeriSign’s Web site, ICANN agreed to an extension of the contract that allows VeriSign to manage the .com and .net domains. Although the extension runs from 2007 to 2012, the lawsuit filed by the developers association contends that the contract “provides for the automatic renewal of the agreement and thereby precludes competitors from ever entering the .com and .net domain name registration market,” thereby establishing a monopoly for the domains. The only means for another company to bid on the work, according to the suit, is if VeriSign goes out of business or fails to meet the terms of the contract. A statement from ICANN said the lawsuit is intended to divert attention away from an ICANN meeting currently being held in Vancouver.

BBC, 29 November 2005