December 1, 2003
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The overseer of the Internet's domain names gained a legal victory in a case challenging its approval of a Web address back-order service being created by VeriSign Inc.
By Matt Hicks
A federal judge denied a preliminary injunction against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN has given preliminary approval to VeriSign's plans to launch a wait list service, which would allow those seeking a particular domain name to pay for the right to claim it in the event the current registration expires. The plaintiffs in the case -- registrars Dotster Inc., Go Daddy Software Inc., and eNom Inc. -- were seeking to prevent ICANN from completing its approval of VeriSign's service. VeriSign, of Mountain View, California is the registry that manages Web addresses in the two most popular domain, ".com" and ".net".
An ICANN spokeswoman said that ICANN and VeriSign are continuing to negotiate terms of the service and that no date has been set for its launch.
The three registrar in the lawsuit against ICANN have competing wait list services and had claimed in seeking a preliminary injunction that ICANN's approval of VeriSign's service was anti-competitive and violated ICANN's agreements with registrars.
U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter disagreed, ruling that "the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate either the possibility of irreparable injury or that the balance of hardships tips sharply in their favor in his ruling."
The case, filed in July, is expected to go to trial in the Q1 of 2004.
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