An Independent Review Panel (IRP) convened to review ICANN decisions has denied Afilias’ appeal against the results of the auction for the right to the .WEB domain, which it controlled jointly with ICANN.
The .WEB was regarded as the most promising domain at the first stage of the New gTLD Program and a potential rival to .COM. Many large players bid for the lot, but victory in the auction was ultimately granted to the surprise dark horse bidder Nu Dot Co, which offered a record sum of $135 million for the domain.
It soon transpired that Nu Dot Co’s participation in the auction had been financed by Verisign, which took over .WEB. This provoked the wrath of the other bidders, but all their attempts to revise the auction results failed. The company that went the whole hog was Afilias, which sold all its domain assets to Donuts a while ago and has changed its name to AltaNovo Domains Limited. However, it retained the .WEB bid and is now fighting for it.
It was granted one independent review before, when the panel ruled that ICANN itself must decide whether the .WEB auction results violated its own rules. Dissatisfied with that decision, Afilias filed another appeal, arguing that the IRP failed to address some of its claims, which it shouldn’t have done. This time an independent panel not only denied the appeal as ungrounded, but also ordered the company to pay ICANN’s legal fees of $237,000, according to Domain Name Wire.
Although ICANN is to make a final decision on the legality of the auction results, few market players have any doubts about what it will decide. The .WEB case is the biggest but far from the only case where bidders have made pre-auction arrangements. The cancellation of the .WEB auction results may provoke new complaints and revision appeals, something that neither ICANN nor the registrars, which are controlling new domain zones, want.
