[registrars] .BIZ Litigation Update

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

I have spoken with Bret Fausett who attended the hearings yesterday and
today and he provide me the following information listed below. Please check
the Blog for any additional information that should be forthcoming:
http://www.lextext.com/icann/

NeuLevel disclose during the hearing that it had received 282,000 unique 2nd
level domain names requests broken down accordingly: Class I (one applicant,
one domain name) approx. 193,000; Class II-A (one applicant, multiple domain
name requests) approx. 30,000; and Class II-B (multiple applicants, multiple
requests) approx. 58,000. In connection with the Class II-B names there were
1.5 million requests.

The Judge issued a preliminary injunction limited to the Class II-B names.
In light of the 1.5 million requests associated with these names, the judge
requested a 3 million payment from NeuLevel to be held in trust by the
court. The Plaintiffs were required to post $800,000 for a total of $1.6
million.

It appears that the trial will not happen for several months to allow
plaintiffs to conduct discovery and serve additional defendants (aka
registrars). With regard to several registrars that previously discussed a
possible joint defense please consider the following. The judge was
questioning his ability to excercise jurisdiction over registrars located
outside the US. This may be valuable information for non-US based registrars
in determining legal counsel should you get served. Just some friendly
(non-legal) advice.

Mike