Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

A hold on the allocation of 58,000 domain names with .biz suffixes has been lifted following a decision by the party bringing legal action against the registry operator not to pay a bond of $1.6 million requested by a Californian court.

The court order was originally imposed on NeuLevel following the filing of the lawsuit by Dave Smiley, an Arizona radio DJ and Skyscraper Productions, a Los Angeles-based company which claimed that NeuLevel ran an illegal lottery when allocating names claimed by trade mark owners in advance of the public offer of .biz registrations.

Where more than one party claimed trade mark rights in a particular domain name, NeuLevel’s plan was to allocate the name to a party chosen at random. This encouraged multiple applications from each party to increase the odds of success, hence the lottery allegation.

The lifting of the ban due to the failure to pay the bond means that NeuLevel can legally distribute the claimed names as originally intended. However, NeuLevel still faces a trial on the lottery allegation and has not yet said if it plans to continue the hold on the disputed names despite the lifting of the legal obligation. Distributing the disputed names could prove more costly for NeuLevel if the court ultimately decides against it.

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