Oversee.net requests summary judgment on claim it owes Moniker founder money under incentive plan.

It’s been a busy week full of filings in the case of Monte Cahn v. Oversee.net.

Monte is suing his former employer on a number of counts, including alleging that he’s owed money under a $13 million Management Incentive Plan (MIP).

The most notable filing is Oversee.net’s request yesterday for summary judgment on Monte’s claim of breach of contract under the $13 million plan.

Part of the bonus plan involved hitting targets for Moniker’s TrafficClub, Registrar, and Domain Sales segments, the court filing says.

Prior to sale, Oversee.net says that Moniker’s forecast for TrafficClub, Registrar, and Domain Sales business segments was $10 million EBITDA for 2007. Monte negotiated the amount for the MIP and it settled at $8.7M EBITDA, according to the filing.

Moniker grew 70% YOY from 2006 to 2007 and was projected to grow 51% in 2008. Oversee forecasted it at 40% to the benefit of MIP participants.

Still, the company says that none of the three segments hit their targets in any of the three plan years.

In 2008 and 2009 Cahn received bonuses under the “Incentive Compensation Plan for Monte Cahn” but not he MIP since MIP incentive plans were not achieved, according to the company.

The motion for summary judgment does not address Cahn’s breach of contract claims for the 2010 commission plan and the sale of Restaurants.com.

You can see Oversee.net’s summary of why it says the first claim should be dismissed here.

Moniker’s Year End Auction ends today.

At least nine domain names will sell in Moniker’s Year End Auction, which ends at 12:15 PM PST today.

Nine domains have hit their reserve, ranging from MosquitoWipes.com at $300 up to PaternityTest.com at $21,500. The latter has six bidders.

A number of other domains are active and close to hitting reserves. QX.com is at $82,500 and has a reserve of up to $100,000. APW.com is up to $12,999 with a reserve range of $10,000-$25000.

Altogether 17 domain names have bids at the time of writing.

You can see and bid in the auction here.

Arguments and antitrust lawsuit could be made against many top level domain names.

Manwin Licensing, the company behind YouPorn, has sued .xxx registry ICM Registry for violating the Sherman Act (i.e. monopoly).

If you read the complaint against ICM you could substitute other top level domains for .xxx and the suit would still make sense.

Manwin says .xxx wasn’t put out to competitive bid, has no price caps, and ICM Registry gets presumptive renewal. It also complains about having to pay high fees for defensive registration.

The same thing could be said for new TLDs that will be applied for starting next year.

According to Manwin:

There is no reasonable substitute for defensive registration in .XXX. For example, by blocking use of a domain name in a TLD other than .XXX, the name holder does not prevent the harm suffered if a non-owner registers that name in the XXX TLD. The .XXX TLD thus constitutes a separate antitrust market for
defensive registrations.

…and later:

ICM currently has a complete monopoly in TLDs that have a name connoting adult content. There are currently no other TLDs beside .XXX with names that connote adult content.

Hmm. For existing TLDs, couldn’t you say the same thing about .org? .mobi?

And just wait for .nyc, .law, etc.

If Manwin gets anywhere in its lawsuit, you can expect this to build momentum against the new TLD program.

(I’m not predicting that the company will have any success with its suit.)

One of the more humorous parts of the lawsuit is this complaint:

ICM submitted partial and redacted information concerning persons purportedly supportive of its application who were allegedly involved in the adult entertainment industry, but who in fact appeared not to have been involved in the industry.

Kind of like the homeless guy who held a picket sign against .xxx for Free Speech Coalition?

Why file the suit, and why file it now?

Maybe it’s professional jealousy that someone is finally making money from internet porn again.

Companies bid each other up for top spots on Google Adwords.

Companies offering new top level domain name services are getting into a pay-per-click bidding war on Google.

According to Google Adwords’ keyword tool, the average CPC for “new top level domain” is $7.41 and “new tld” is $4.91.

Of course the keyword tool is notoriously inaccurate when it comes to the what people are actually paying because it depends on your landing page, visitor location, etc.

But it’s no surprise that consultants and registries are paying top dollar to attract a share of the small number of searches from potential applicants. A client win can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars for the company.

Some of the companies bidding on these keywords on Google include:

VeriSign
Afilias
Fairwinds Partners (which just announced its entrance into the game)
CSC Global
Instra
United Domains (pitching per-registrations)

Lawyer says it will battle on even after application window opens.

Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO), a new group formed to try to stall or can ICANN’s new top level domain name program, says it has more than two months to make a difference.

The application window for new top level domains opens January 12. But Doug Wood, Association of National Advertisers counsel, told World Trademark Review that it plans to battle the program even after that date:

While January marks the opening of the application window for gTLDs, Wood predicts the fight will indeed continue if ICANN presses ahead: “The internet is broken. There are serious security risks. Consumers are being bilked every single day. Brands are being hijacked every single day. There are very serious security issues. No matter what you think about this particular idea, no one can deny that adding hundreds more top-level domains will make these matters worse. So what we are saying to ICANN is ‘stop, take a breath and let’s talk about this’.

“And the reason ICANN should not roll forward is that, if they do, this movement will not go away. They will be under more spotlights and pressures if they say to the brand community that they don’t care. They can say ‘this is our sandbox and, if you don’t want to play in it, get out’. But that isn’t going to happen. They should realise how serious this is. We have the momentum – as they say in sports, we have the mo – and it is building every day.”

I personally think that if CRIDO is considering filing a lawsuit against the program it will do so before January 12. Otherwise this whole thing will look like a “membership rallying cry”.

What’s a membership rallying cry? It’s when associations try to come up with a cause to prove their worth to members.