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Court tosses VeriSign suit vs. overseers
A federal judge dismissed an antitrust complaint against a key Internet oversight group brought by a company that controls directories for guiding Internet users worldwide.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz on Thursday dismissed the suit brought by VeriSign Inc. against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The judge had previously dismissed the challenge but allowed VeriSign time to file an amended complaint.
In dismissing the antitrust suit, Matz said VeriSign could not claim that ICANN's board was dominated by VeriSign competitors.
The judge ruled the antitrust claims could not be refiled.
The decision means breach of contract and other claims will move from the federal courts to a California state court.
ICANN President and Chief Executive Paul Twomey said he hoped VeriSign would not pursue the case.
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"Rather than refiling in state court, we hope VeriSign will sit down across the table and try to resolve the disputed provisions of the registry agreements," Twomey said in a statement. "We would be disappointed if they continue to waste the ICANN community's money while they test their legal theories."
Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign claims decisions by ICANN stymied its efforts to expand its business. The company sued ICANN in February, alleging, among other things, that the oversight body's actions amounted to a conspiratorial act to restrain competition.
In 1998, the U.S. government designated ICANN to handle domain names and other Internet addressing policies.
"While the venue will change, our objective to gain clarity regarding ICANN's appropriate role and the process for the introduction of new services does not," said Tom Galvin, VeriSign vice president of government relations, in a statement.
VeriSign controls the computers that contain the master list of domain name suffixes, such as ".com" and ".fr." The company also runs directories for the two most popular suffixes, ".com" and ".net."
Last fall, the company introduced Site Finder, a service for guiding Internet users who mistype ".com" or ".net" addresses. Instead of an error message, Web surfers get suggestions on where they might have wanted to go. VeriSign gets money for directing traffic to some of those sites.
Because Site Finder made some spam filters and rival search services stop working properly, ICANN threatened legal action. Critics said VeriSign was trying to make millions from its management of what is essentially a public resource.
VeriSign agreed to suspend the service but then sued ICANN over Site Finder
and what the company considers unnecessary delays and conditions placed on other
planned offerings, including domain names in foreign languages.
Source: http://www.namecheap.com/
