4th Circuit Rules Against Verisign Appeal of Dismissed Lanham Act Lawsuit of XYZ
Verisign lost its appeal Wednesday to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of District Judge Claude Hilton’s 2015 dismissal of the domain name registry’s false advertising lawsuit against registry XYZ. Verisign claimed XYZ violated the Lanham Act by claiming…
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entities couldn't get desired .com domain names from Verisign, and that XYZ’s .xyz top-level domain was “the next .com.” Hilton dismissed the lawsuit in the Alexandria, Va., court, saying XYZ’s statements about its rising registration numbers were “verifiably true." When XYZ “stated they were a market leader in new TLD’s and that they had the most new registrations than any other TLD, they were basing that information off of an accurate zone file,” Hilton said in his ruling (in Pacer). A three-member 4th Circuit panel affirmed Hilton’s ruling Wednesday. Verisign’s analysis of XYZ’s claims “suffers from what we have identified as a ‘fatal flaw’ in calculating Lanham Act damages: It assumes rather than demonstrates that every .xyz registration during the relevant time period was the result of XYZ’s allegedly false statements,” said Judge Pamela Harris for the three-member panel. Judges Henry Floyd and James Wynn joined Harris in affirming the district court ruling. XYZ’s claims about the availability of .com domain names couldn’t be considered false or misleading under the Lanham Act, the 4th Circuit ruled. “XYZ’s statements concerning the availability of desirable .com names constitute opinion or puffery, not statements of fact on which reasonable consumers could rely,” the court said. “XYZ’s YouTube video claim that it is ‘impossible to find the domain name that you want’ … we conclude, cannot be interpreted as a verifiable statement of objective fact.” Verisign and XYZ didn’t immediately comment.