Founder of Name.space, Paul Garrin, not only is suing ICANN to stop them from issuing new TLDs that he had filed for over a decade ago, but he’s determined to change the way the Internet is organized. His lawsuit against ICANN is for trademark infringement and is a federal antitrust complaint.
Garrin claims that his domains “have been shut out of the DNS” and that due to the way the Internet is organized, ICANN has been “effectively blocking and quarantining” the Name.space domains from the “majority of Internet users”. The root of the Internet is the one controlled by ICANN and although alternate systems are there, such as the one run by Name.space, most Internet users are not aware of that.
His suit goes on to say that there is no reason why ICANN has “arbitrarily limited” the number of non-country code TLDs to 22. Garrin says that now that ICANN is opening more TLDs, they are allowing others to apply for domains that Name.space has been operating since 1996 on the alternate domain name system.
When Garrin originally applied for 118 domains in 2000, the fee was $50,000 for the whole lot. He says the new application process creates “procedural and financial barriers” that block his company from obtaining the domains Name.space originally asked for. The new fee for the current round of applications is $158,000 per domain sought.
Wrap Up of ICANN Meeting
The newest round of top level domain applications was on the agenda, of course, but was not the only topic of discussion and debate at the ICANN 45 meeting in Toronto last week. The new Trademark Clearinghouse proposals built into the new program were a hot topic. Everyone agrees that new rights protections are needed, but there are still details on how this will take place. Most of the process has been ironed out but who is checking on possibly infringing domains and when that check will occur are hotly debated. The next ICANN meeting will take place in Beijing, April 2013.
New Secretary of ICANN Group Elected
Michele Neylon, founder of Irish registrar and hosting provider Blacknight Solutions, was elected to serve as secretary to ICANN’s Registrar Stakeholder Group. This organization is very active in ICANN processes such as policy development as the group works to protect the interests of both domain registrars and their customers. The only European member of the group, Neylon joins chairman Matt Serlin from MarkMonitor, vice-chairman Jeff Eckhause from Demand Media, and treasurer James Bladel from GoDaddy.
Verisign Reports 3rd Quarter Financials
After the market closed Thursday, Verisign released their report of the 3rd quarter. Revenue of $224 million was an increase of 13% over last year’s 3rd quarter. Net income was up from $59 million to $78 million and diluted earnings per shares also rose, going from .36 per share last year to .47 per share. The company also reported a 7.1% increase in .com and .net domains for the year so far, with 1.1% increase in new registrations for just the 3rd quarter. Even with increases across the board, the disappointing lack of growth in the last quarter drove after market trading leading to an 11% drop in shares.