Tempers are still running high in the US when it comes to the situation with .WEB new gTLD. The fight for it (and big money that come with the possibility to manage it) have moved from ICANN's high management cabinets to courtrooms. We remind that .WEB was initially seen as one of the most promising new gTLDs. When an unknown company Nu Dot Co (NDC) expressed interest in the domain along with such “heavyweights” like Google, Donuts and Afilias, many immediately assumed that a large player is behind it and it doesn’t want to show itself yet.
The guess was fully confirmed when NDC won the domain on ICANN’s auction for a record of US$135 million. It became known that NDC was financed by Verisign, which also managed .COM and .NET. It caused an outrage among other applicants for the domain. Not only because the operator of the largest “old” domains got the most promising new one, therefore, jeopardized competition on the market. But also because applicants for .WEB thought if not to win the auction, but at least to seriously replenish their budgets – if the domain was auctioned off at a private auction all lost parties would get approximately 20 million dollars. However, NDC deprived them from this possibility by refusing to participate in a private auction and bringing the matter to the ICANN auction – total amount went to the budget of the organization.
This allowed to suspect that ICANN had it’s own interest in this outcome. Donuts, the owner of the largest portfolio of new gTLDs, decided to challenge the fate of .WEB and get the compensation through the court. However, it seems it lost again. According to the agreement with ICANN, all registries of the new domains agreed not to sue the corporation. Donuts, obviously, knew about that but relied on the peculiarities of the Californian laws. The law allows to consider the agreement not to sue unenforceable if it allows one of the sides to avoid responsibility for violating the law. However, Domain Name Wire reports that judge Percy Anderson of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California after reviewing the appeal decided that ICANN corporation hadn’t violated any laws and this is why the agreement not to sue should be enforceable, therefore he rejected Donuts’ claim.
