Where there was more than one applicant for the same .biz domain name, that name will be placed on hold, according to the ruling by the court. Authorised sellers of the names have begun trying to reassure their customers that the action will likely affect less than 20% of all applications. More than 200,000 .biz domain names will be activated as scheduled on 23rd October.
NeuLevel was chosen by the internet's technical co-ordination body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to deal with the registration of the new .biz domains. The allocation process adopted by NeuLevel was based on parties paying a small fee to reserve a particular domain name during a specified period ending in September. However, applicants were not given any domain name rights until the end that period and if more than one request was made for the same domain, then the rights to that domain will be determined by at random. The fee was not refunded for unsuccessful applications.
The class action lawsuit argued that this process encouraged applicants to make several applications and payments for each domain name in an attempt to increase their chances of success in the event of the domain names rights being determined randomly - thereby amounting to a lottery.
NeuLevel received nearly 1.2 million applications for the 53,000 names which are now on hold, an average of 22 applications per domain name. The winning applicant for each name was to be chosen by 23rd October, but the judge has ordered that NeuLevel reviews its procedures for doing so. NeuLevel has also been ordered to set aside $3 million to cover possible refunds to applicants. A trial date for the lawsuit has still to be fixed. Those bringing the case will be asking that the preliminary injunction be made permanent.