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.
