Company that helped found organization pulls out amid legal battles.

iREIT, owner of hundreds of thousands of domain names, has left the Internet Commerce Association, according to DNJournal’s latest newsletter. iREIT effectively founded the organization, which strives to protect domain name owners’ interests. According to the newsletter:

iREIT, which has undergone a change of leadership in the wake of a legal battle with Verizon, has left the ICA. Many felt iREIT’s presence was an obstacle to increasing ICA support because the lawsuit Verizon filed against them centers on domains Verizon contends infringe upon their trademarks.

The ICA recently adopted a Code of Conduct that, among other things, requires members to “follow accepted trademark law and respect the brands and trademarks of others.” It will be up to the court to decide the merits of the Verizon/iREIT case, but that is likely to be a long process. By departing the ICA now, iREIT has helped the organization move forward by eliminating their role in the organization as an issue.

In February of this year, author David Kesmodel disclosed that iREIT owned a number of typos related to Disney, Citibank, Verizon, and Abercrombie. He also pointed out that the company owned typos of its advertising partner Google. It also owned typos of Starbucks, despite one of that company’s founders being an investor in iREIT.

iREIT is also named in other lawsuits. It will be interesting to see how the Verizon lawsuit works out. I’m sure iREIT’s lawyers are having a field day with Verizon’s latest antics which effectively make it one of the world’s largest cybersquatters. Verizon is a member of The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, a non-profit organized to protect trademark holders against cybersquatters.

Another member of CADNA, computer maker Dell, has a similar typo-redirect scheme.

Now that iREIT has left Internet Commerce, will CADNA decide to push out Verizon and Dell since their actions go contrary to that organization’s stated beliefs?

[Disclosure: I was involved with iREIT prior to the company being officially formed.]