June 06, 2009

CFIT / VeriSign: And now ?

So the Coalition For Internet Transparency may proceed in its antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign. Since there can only be one operator for each domain name registry at any one time, the only viable competition can take place in connection with obtaining a new contract after expiration of the old one. A US Court thus ruled that a no-bid contract for VeriSign is anticompetitive per se.
I wonder whether the ruling would have been the same in the case of a sponsored gTLD (they are of a different nature) - and of course the outcome would be different with some of the new gTLDs to be launched (think .sport, a project said to be brought by two different applicants).

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