Verizon May Be Unable To Collect $33 Million Judgment Experts Say
Posted: January 6th, 2009, by Adam StrongIn our previous post about the news that Verizon had won a default judgment against domain registrar OnlineNic, we pointed out an important fact in the case. The registrar OnlineNic is a owned by a Chinese company. The company is listed on the ICANN list of registrars as a US based registrar and reportedly has a presence in San Francisco, but questions are being raised whether Verizon will be able to collect on this judgment.
Internet News took a closer look at the Verizon vs OnlineNic case and asked legal experts whether Verizon will be able to enforce this judgment given the jurisdictional issues.
Martin Reynolds, a distinguished analyst at research firm Gartner, is doubtful that Verizon can collect its money. “You can only enforce U.S. laws that accept it, and generally that means you can only collect in the U.S.,”
Scott Christie, a partner at law firm McCarter & English and a former Federal prosecutor specializing in IT cases, said that U.S. firms seeking to collect on judgments handed down by U.S. courts from companies based abroad have little recourse.
“Even if they win a default judgment because the defendant did not turn up in court, it may be more expensive than it’s worth to levy against their assets if they don’t have clearly identifiable assets in the United States,” Christie told InternetNews.com.
Looks like Verizon may have won a big bag of nothing. This could easily explain why OnlineNic didn’t even bother to challenge the suit.
As Internet News points out, there is speculation that Verizon may take matters even further and push for ICANN to revoke OnlineNic’s accreditation. Verizon likely has no grounds to push for that either since the case was a civil matter. If OnlineNic had been charged in a criminal case, there might be room to make this move. ICANN had revoked EstDomains accreditation last year because, among other things, the company president had been convicted of credit card fraud, forgery and money laundering.
(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com
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