Cahn adds allegations and drops one claim.
Moniker founder Monte Cahn has filed an amended lawsuit against Oversee.net, which purchased Moniker in 2007 from Seevast.
Cahn sued Oversee claiming that he was not properly paid under a $13 million incentive plan. Oversee has asked for most of the case to be dismissed on the grounds that it’s a simple contract dispute.
[Update: Moniker has released the following statement to DNW: “This is a legal matter that is now in the hands of the courts. Oversee has asked the court to dismiss most of the lawsuit’s claims as the suit is nothing more than an alleged breach of contract case.”]
The updated complaint (pdf) has some noticeable omissions from the original, including deleting the claim that Oversee agreed to buy Moniker for $35 million as well as Cahn’s pay information.
It also omits the statement “Through his work with Moniker, Cahn became a highly respected figure in the domain industry.”
The complaint focuses on how Kupietzky allegedly promised that Moniker would get adequate marketing and public relations assistance from Oversee and that operations would be integrated “so that there was a seamless integration of software and a uniform way to respond to intellectual property disputes, litigation, audit and survey responses and complaints from customers.” Kupietzky also allegedly promised cross-selling potential between Oversee subsidiaries.
Cahn also claims that Oversee.net founder and CEO at the time Lawrence Ng told him that Moniker was understaffed pre-merger and its employees were overworked, and that Oversee would provide Moniker with more resources.
He claims these never came to fruition:
Defendants formed the intent, and actively concealed and misrepresented the true fact that they intended to fully subjugate Moniker and Cahn, taking for themselves the full benefit of Moniker’s great public reputation and industry value at the time of merger while simultaneously jettisoning and reducing Cahn’s staff, influence and ability to properly manage and lead Moniker.
Other new allegations in the amended suit include:
-Oversee restricted transactions for adult domain names which comprised a “substantial portion” of Moniker’s business before the merger
-Cahn was promised he’d report to Ng as CEO, whom he had a good relationship with. But Ng knew before the merger he’d be stepping down as CEO.
-Ng and Kupietzky purposely delayed implementing infrastructure and technology integration so Moniker couldn’t fully monitor, account for and measure its own performance levels.
-“Oversee stalled and ultimately did not obtain a California escrow license for Moniker so that it could legally perform its auctions in California, the state in which Oversee was based. This adversely affected Moniker’s ability to earn revenue through its live domain auctions.”
Cahn says that these changes led to customer dissatisfaction and customers started moving domains away from Moniker.
Despite Oversee.net’s pending motion to dismiss most of the claims in the case, the amended complaint drops only one: breach of fiduciary duty.
Hal Meyer says
I agree, Monte Cahn does have a great reputation in the domain industry.
Overseen says
“Oversee restricted transactions for adult domain names which comprised a “substantial portion” of Moniker’s business before the merger”
This is a gooder. Oversee, the real kings of adult, cybersquatting, typosquatting, front running, tasting, auction shilling and everything else that is bad about the domain industry tels Monte he can’t do adult names. Thats a good one
Andrew Allemann says
@ Overseen – I believe it’s in relation to the adult domain auctions they did. Of course they didn’t do too many of those.
ex_overseer says
-Ng and Kupietzky purposely delayed implementing infrastructure and technology integration so Moniker couldn’t fully monitor, account for and measure its own performance levels.
Completely false. Moniker infrastructure was migrated as quickly as humanly possible. Many of us on the engineering side dealt with the pain that was Moniker. The system itself was riddled with show stopper bugs when Oversee.net bought it. Many of us would have preferred to use the internal register AKA Nameking that actually worked, was built by competent developers, and had already registered hundreds of thousands if not millions of domains.
On top of all of this the engineers at Moniker we’re whiny little bitches that had attitude problems when it came time for integration. Circumventing processes, lying, arguing, and being downright rude to others that were just trying to do their job.
How was Moniker measuring performance before Oversee.net came along?
ChristineK says
“Cahn also claims that Oversee.net founder and CEO at the time Lawrence Ng told him that Moniker was understaffed pre-merger and its employees were overworked, and that Oversee would provide Moniker with more resources.”
I was employed at Moniker at the time of “merger/acquisition” Under-staffed was a mild way to put it!
Answer me this Oversee – if we were so under-staffed and over worked – then why is it you let 33% of the employees at Moniker go????
I know Monte well enough to know that everything he claims in the lawsuit is the truth.
And unless you were there in person to hear what we were all promised by Ng in person, you have no right to an opinion one way or the other.
After being a loyal employee for long time, out of nowhere I got the boot along with others, no rhyme or reason – just greed.