The decision to drop the case followed the refusal of a San Fransisco judge to hear it in his court. In a statement the company said:
"Network Solutions is very pleased with the early outcome of this case… This case is the second purported class action instituted by the same attorney against NSI which challenged the fees which NSI charges for its Internet domain name registration services. The Washington, D.C. Federal District Court dismissed the first case in 1998
For many years, NSI was the only company authorised to sell the top level domains of .com, .org and .net. The lawsuit argued that the domain names should have been treated as a public resource because the US government empowered the sale of the names to NSI.
The European Commission ended a six month antitrust investigation into NSI in January this year; the US Department of Justice ended its similar 18 month investigation into the company the same month. The company made massive profits in the late 1990s when it enjoyed a monopoly on the provision of the generic top level domain names. Largely as a result of these concerns, the US Commerce Department appointed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit body, to introduce competition into the registration market.