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02|25|2008 03:13 pm EDT

Class Action Suit Against Network Solutions and ICANN Underway

by Adam Strong in Categories: Featured

According to a press release from the law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, a federal class action lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court, Central District of California against domain name registrar Network Solutions and ICANN. The suit clam that the NSI has forced customers into buying domains from the company rather than through potentially cheaper avenues, in effect netting the company millions of dollars.

According to the law firm’s website, Kabateck Brown Kellner is “one of the foremost plaintiffs-only litigation law firms in the western United States, with attorneys recovering more than $500 million in judgments, verdicts, and settlements on behalf of their clients, including more than 75 recoveries of more than $1 million.” The firm has won cases against Google, Yahoo, Farmer’s Insurance, Eli Lilly and others and claims to always be “on the consumers side”

ICANN is also named in the suit for their role in enabling and allowing Network Solutions to continue this practice.

“ICANN is aware that Network Solutions is abusing this policy and yet continues to facilitate its actions.”

Given that ICANN performance will be the subject of a public review on February 28th, the timing of this news surely can’t be a help at putting a good face on ICANN policy and performance.

In January, DomainNameNews.com released a featured story detailing the information behind NSI front-running on domain names. The story brought down our servers and continues to receive commentary across the web. Network Solutions public relations staff quickly went into damage control with a unified response that their actions were designed to protect customers against front-running. In a further attempt at damage control and amongst the public outcry, NSI quickly adjusted their policies so that the domains being registered were only names searched on the homepage, so they were not profiting from the domain parked page while they were held, and so the nameserver information could not be searched so easily. Apparently these tactics still did have not alleviated the core problems. The details and responses from NSI and ICANN to this lawsuit should be interesting.

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  • http://leadmarketwatch.com Bill Rice

    Nasty little kick in the pants for your $14.99 domain registration–I charge you more for the pleasure of competing with my customers!

    These practices are only going to get nastier and more litigious as domains become more accepted as monetary assets.

  • Antoinette

    I’ll be very interested in seeing how this lawsuit unfolds. I bet they settle rather than change their policies. It would be more profitable to them to give payouts to the few people who would participate in a class action suit than change a policy that daily earns them a great deal of money.

  • http://davezan.com Dave Zan

    I’ll be very interested in seeing how this lawsuit unfolds. I bet they settle rather than change their policies. It would be more profitable to them to give payouts to the few people who would participate in a class action suit than change a policy that daily earns them a great deal of money.

    Won’t be surprising if Network Solutions chooses to settle. However, it won’t be surprising either if they choose to fight it out, and they’re not exactly a total stranger to legal suits.

  • tyop

    I did some graphic design work for NSI sometime around ’97-98. It was just a fairly small building not far from Boston, their servers didn’t take up much more than one wall in a little 20′ x 20′ clean room. I don’t know what level of ‘clean’ they were trying to maintain (I’m more of an artist than a nerd) but I feel such a sense of loss or a missed opportunity when I think about how the cup of tea in my hand could have changed the internet as we know it today.

    “Oops, I slipped! :( Sorry, I didn’t mean to short circuit your server thingy.”

    With the way I was dressed that first day, I probably could have gotten away with just about anything. For once I’m actually glad I didn’t know then what I know now, this lawsuit is going to be too funny to miss :p

  • http://www.collisiondomains.com WWW.CollisionDomains.com

    I feel Network solutions has to pay a settlement for this case. from the past history of lawsuit firm, it shows that it won cases filed for its clients and won more than $750 million against Google, Yahoo!,
    Farmer’s Insurance, Eli Lilly and others. to them ” NSI” is nothing But it will create a world renowned bad reputation in history. Each and every domainer become aware about this silly activity of NSI & ICANN . Other registrars will be very serious to keep up their business + reputation.

    It is a foolish thing for ICANN ” social firm paid to maintain domain records ” to support such an illegal activity.

    For NSI – already a fraud no problem. But it is a major bad name for ICANN in world history for supporting illegal domain scams.

    i feel all are making scams, recently verisign sells its partial root name server data for huge cash on regular basis. may be ICANN also do it as it owns one root name server among 13.

    Best Regards

  • DOWN WITH DAVE

    JUST wanted to let everybody know that DAVE ZAN works for Network Solutions and you can read all of his “PRO-NETSOL” rhetoric on any of the blog posts….. see for yourself
    http://paul.stadig.name/2008/01/22/network-solutions-steals-your-domain-names/

  • http://www.generic4all.info/ Eric Man

    Doesn’t sound dramatic to me.

  • Ronald Holloway

    This company has sold me a Domain Name that already existed. Perhaps some of it is my fault. I should have typed in that Web Address to see what happened but I did not.

    I entered the domain name in their box and selected the checkbox and then entered submit. It said it was available. I do not like the idea at all that they reserve a name and then I as the user have to buy it form them for a much more expensive price.

    I called them and told them that the damn Domain Name that they sold me is taken and they gave me a bunch of bull. THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS: THE DOMAIN NAME WHEN TYPED INTO A BROWSER DISPLAYS ANOTHER COMPANY. NOT MINE.

    WHAT CAN I DO ABOU THIS ?