ICANN Antitrust Case Moves Forward

A Federal  antitrust lawsuit filed against ICANN (Internet Consortium for Assigning Names and Numbers) has passed the first hurdle, with a Federal Judge ruling that ICANN, while a nonprofit, may still be engaged in the kinds of commercial activities covered by U.S. antitrust laws.  The Judge handling this preliminary hearing ruled that "ICANN's argument about its charitable purpose is "irrelevant to an analysis of whether ICANN's activities are commercial."
  A publishing company filed the suit

against ICANN last November, shortly before the rollout of a new ".xxx" top-level domain. ICANN said that companies or individuals could pay the registry ICM -- tapped to manage the .xxx domain -- to prevent their names from being registered with an .xxx at the end, but that doing so would cost $150.
(The suit argued) that companies or individuals who wanted to prevent their names being used by others in a .xxx domain should not have to pay a fee of $150. The company said the fee was artificially high and reflected price gouging, monopolistic conduct and other anti-competitive practices.

The ".xxx" domain was established expressly for porn and other "adult" sites, in part to facilitate the ability of filters to distinguish adult from more general-interest sites.
  When the case was filed, the Association of National Advertisers said the suit illustrated the issues that is likely to emerge from ICANN's plans to allow companies purchase the rights to use their brand names or other words as part of their top-level domain names (the text-based URL).

Source -  Judge Allows Antitrust Lawsuit Against ICANN,  Online Media Daily