Company claims new TLD program is a conspiracy to enrich a select few and that ICANN is violating antitrust laws.
Name.space has filed its opening brief in an appeal of a lawsuit it brought against ICANN last year.
Name.space operates an “alternative root” whereby certain internet users can access domain names such as .online and .blog. It applied to have 118 of its alt-root domain names become part of the official root during ICANN’s 2000 “proof of concept round”. Its application was never accepted.
When the “new” new TLD program rolled out, it sued ICANN arguing that ICANN violated anti-trust rules and conspired with insiders to enrich them when it set up the rules for the program. It also claimed trademark infringement since many of the new TLDs matched domains it offers in its alternative root.
The company asked for an injunction against the new TLD program and for damages.
In March of this year, a judge granted ICANN’s motion to dismiss the suit. The next month, name.space filed an appeal to United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
You can read a copy of name.space’s opening brief, and why it believes the lower court erred, here (pdf).
Bret Fausett says
It’s hard not to laugh about the fact that the law firm behind the Applicant Auctions, http://www.applicantauction.com/team, is also the law firm seeking to vindicate Name.Space’s pre-emptive right to hundreds of TLDs. How many of the Name.Space TLDs have already been sold at Applicant Auction? I’ll start… I found .COLLEGE on the list, https://namespace.us/tlds.php. What else?