Re: [registrars] California Litigation Update

[Patricio Valdes <valdes@parava.net>]

Mike,


Thank you for correcting me on yesterday's post. I am no attorney and it 
was not my intention to mislead anyone. Hope that did not scare anyone 
for a while.

Patricio Vades
Parava Networks

Michael D. Palage wrote:

>There have been some posts to the list recently regarding the California
>action and I believe there is some potential for confusion that I would like
>to help straighten out.
>
>First when Patricio Valdes made his first post yesterday, he stated here is
>a copy of the "Preliminary Injunction." Patricio forgot an important word
>"Motion". What was posted to the list was a copy of the motion that the
>plaintiff's attorneys filed.
>
>Since the original filing of this "motion" the parties have moved the date
>of the preliminary injunction back to Sept 26. The following synopsis
>available on the ICANN Blog at http://www.lextext.com/icann/ appears in my
>opinion to be an accurate summary of the events surrounding this litigation
>to date.
>
>"Smiley Hearing Moved to Sept. 26th. The preliminary injunction hearing in
>the Smiley case has been moved to September 26th, and the Court has promised
>to issue a ruling before September 28th. Opposition briefs from the
>Defendants are now due on September 14th. Neulevel secured the extension by
>promising the Court that it would not pick winners in the lottery until
>October 2nd, ensuring that no actions would take place before the Court had
>an opportunity to rule. (The October 2nd selection date suggests that
>Neulevel has made a modest extension of the October 1st live date promised
>on its web site)."
>
>Now according to some of the California attorneys that I have spoken with,
>here is what we can expect to happen on a procedural basis. In motions like
>this, the court will generally make available a preliminary or tentative
>order prior to the hearing to give both sides a view of its current
>analysis. This allows counsel for each side to focus its time and effort
>during the motion hearing on the issues the court has identified as
>critical. So if a document is circulated prior to the 26th, this does not
>absolutely mean that this was the decision of the court. One the other hand,
>the court may issue no preliminary/tentative order and wait to hear the
>entire oral arguments before issuing its order. Legal process is not an easy
>process to follow :-)
>
>Regarding Bob's subsequent email about registrars not traveling to
>California. The service of process rules for California are very extensive.
>Some legal types have argued that based on registrars contracts with a
>certain non-profit California company, registrars would be subject to
>service of process through other means set forth in the California state
>statutes. Therefore staying our of California will do you no good. As Bob
>indicated he is very sensitive to this issue because in the past he was
>served personally during an ICANN meeting a couple of years ago. For a bit
>of history, this was an action filed by a company providing registry
>services in an alternate root against CORE. The short story was that the
>defendants prevailed on a summary judgment motion.
>
>For those new registrars that would like to learn more about the colorful
>past of our industry see me in Montevideo, where I am attempting to set up a
>cross-constituency Karaoke night out. This is based upon the success last
>year when we had the cross-constituency tour of the pyramids in Egypt.
>
>As always I will follow these matters closely and will update the
>Constituency in a timely manner. I apologize for the delay but I was
>off-line all yesterday while tied up in meetings :-)
>
>Best regards,
>
>Mike
>
>