A complaint alleging antitrust violations against Verisign–the corporation with exclusive contracts with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to maintain .com and .net domain name registries–states a valid claim.
In Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. v. VeriSign, Inc., No. 07-16151 (June 5, 2009), the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California with respect to one of the contracts. It held that the claims concerning the “.net contract” were correctly dismissed due to the competitive bidding process that preceded its execution; however, it held the “.com contract” to be much more suspect in the absence of such bidding–and so those claims were valid.