name.space

I. Factual Background

A. Top Level Domains

Each Internet website is assigned a unique Internet Protocol (“IP”) numerical address. For ease of searching, websites also have alphanumeric domain names, such as “nytimes.com.” The portion before the dot—“nytimes”—is called the “second level domain.” The portion after the dot—“com”—is the TLD.

There are three main types of TLDs—sponsored TLDs (such as “.gov” and “.edu”), restricted to users who meet specified criteria; country-code TLDs (such as “.uk” or “.fr”), controlled by sovereign nations; and generic TLDs (such as “.com” and “.net”), those at issue in this case, open to all users. Individual generic TLDs are operated by registries, such as VeriSign, which sell the ability to register a domain name with a particular TLD and maintain a zone file, or registry, of all the domain names associated with that TLD. These registries approve registrars, such as godaddy.com, to sell domain names incorporating those TLDs to the public.

NAME.SPACE, INC. V. ICANN

A “Domain Name System” (“DNS”) links each of these unique domain names with the IP address corresponding to that website. When an Internet user searches for…