With the meeting in Vancouver barely started, ICANN has been served with at least two lawsuits.

The first suit comes from the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, which is pretty much a creature of Pool.com, as noted by an alert reader of Bret Fausett’s blog. The suit seeks an injunction preventing the implementation of the VeriSign-ICANN agreement, alleging anti-trust violations. CFIT is also filing a complaint with the European Commission.

The World Association of Domain Name Developers also filed suit, alleging “antitrust activities, including conspiracy, monopolization, illegal price fixing and monopolizing ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ domain name markets.” The WADND is made up of people in the PPC/Traffic area of domain names, including Ron Jackson of Domain Name Journal and Monty Kahn of Moniker. They have made available the actual complaint and a press release.

Whether these lawsuits have a chance of succeeding or not, they certainly reflect widespread anger and disappointment among ICANN participants, especially registrars (Tucows, Godaddy) but also those with no (apparent) financial interest (John Berryhill).

I’m going to Vancouver tomorrow. Should be interesting.

Posted by Antony in: Domains, Internet Governance