Donuts has filed a lawsuit in California. More specifically, Donuts has changed the wording of the claim against ICANN that it filed earlier when it tried to stop the auction for .WEB domain, reports Domain Incite. Back then the registry claimed that there were big players behind the NDC (one of the companies that participated in the auction) that didn't want to reveal their participation in the fight for the domain before its time and that ICANN corporation refused to conduct a necessary check.
The court rejected Donuts' arguments, the auction took place, it was NDC that won and paid a record amount of $135 million. It soon became known that Verisign provided financial support to the winner and will soon manage the domain. In other words, all Donuts' suspicious turned out to be true. However, it's quite hard to find any signs of violations of ICANN's rules and regulations in what has happened. Nevertheless, Donuts lawyers will try to prove that ICANN has in fact violated its own rules. Moreover, they believe that the fact that it was Verisign that won the domain is a violation of the principles of free competition and anti-monopoly laws and suspect ICANN in having financial interest (the winning bid in the auction goes to the corporation's budget). Donuts registry is willing to get 22.5 million dollars from ICANN – this is exactly how much it would have gotten for losing the auction if it had been a private auction of contenders and not ICANN auction that in the end determined the fate of .WEB.
Observers consider the prospects of the claim to be highly questionable since no new arguments that would prove the violation of ICANN rules have appeared. Moreover, these rules are obviously violated by Donuts itself. As all registries that are applicants for new domains it signed a covenant not to file lawsuits against ICANN to resolve potential disputes. Nevertheless, the servants of Themis of California will now have to put a period to this issue.
