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.
