Lawsuit alleges domain was renewed and should not have been auctioned off.
A high-profile expired domain auction for blockchain.ai ended today, but the former registrant has filed a lawsuit claiming he renewed the domain.
In the lawsuit, Howard Gould stated that he was the domain’s registrant as of December 2017.
The domain was set to auto-renew with OnlyDomains, but the auto-renewal failed, resulting in the domain expiring on July 19, 2025.
After becoming aware of the failure on September 21, Gould claims he paid OnlyDomains for the renewal and received a confirmation.
On October 3, he emailed OnlyDomains asking why his invoice was still labeled as pending. He also noticed the domain was listed for sale in a Namecheap auction.
The .ai domain registry, managed by Identity Digital, has a partnership with Namecheap to sell expired domains through its auction platform. When the domain was on the verge of deletion, an auction was initiated at Namecheap.
On October 6, OnlyDomains informed Gould that he would also have to pay a restoration fee for the domain. After paying the invoices, he alleges that the domain still went into PendingDelete status.
Gould, through an attorney, contacted Identity Digital on October 8 to try to halt the auction.
That didn’t happen, so Gould filed a lawsuit (pdf) yesterday in California. The suit names OnlyDomains, its parent company CentralNic NZ Ltd (part of Team Internet Group), Identity Digital, and Namecheap.
I am very sure there is something wrong with Identity Digital.. Ram Mohan should answer it. May be he is another Aman Bhutani.
Even after having exclusive partnership with namecheap for expired domains , they dont deliver .ai domain names. If you win at namecheap expired .ai auction , chances are that the auction might be cancelled and someone else takes domain name via hand reg.
To everyone treating .AI as equivalent to .COM, pay attention to this case.
There’s no ICANN safety net here. No mandated grace period. No consistent redemption policy. This is a country code domain, subject to local jurisdiction and registry discretion.Identity Digital, now running .AI, is almost certainly fully protected under its TOS to act as it wishes once a domain passes the registry’s internal window.
And let’s not ignore what no one likes to say out loud. When registrars and registries also run auctions, the incentives are quietly aligned against renewals.
Would anyone be surprised if the registrar and registry decided to just not reply to emails?
The system rewards expiration.
“The system rewards expiration.”
Correct. The value of registrants to registrars is more in them ceasing to be customers, than retaining them as customers.
Hope he wins.
If this case goes to trial, discovery could get very interesting.
Interested to see what happens next
The domain expired on July 21 as per the owner statement and he came to know this as it was not renewed till sept 21..I am not sure why such a high value domain is unattended by the owner for almost 2 months and he acted at the verge of pending delete only..since it is not a .com case,it would be interesting to see the court verdict and final result..if he loses the domain in this case,it will be a warning for others also..let’s watch and see this..good luck to owner also