[anti-abuse-wg] Domain Tools whois lawsuit dismissed

The Domain Tools lawsuit where they sought to declare that their 
harvesting and resale of whois information without permission is 
"lawful" has been dismissed by a US Federal District court judge. The 
decision is at:

http://network-tools.com/domain-Tools-dismissal.pdf

The lead attorney for the case is Derek Newman.  (He is the attorney who 
represented mass e-mailers and defended cases brought by James Gordon 
and had him designated as a "vexatious litigant" and has his personal 
items sold at auction to pay the legal fees.  Newman was also staff 
counsel to Seattle's "porn king" and boasts how they were good friends 
in published reports at Wired.com).

The lawsuit was brought shortly after a complaint was filed with the 
privacy office of Canada about the resale of whois data from Tucows 
(which is in Canada) without permission.  As a result the court has been 
asked to issue sanctions related to anti-SLAPP laws (SLAPP is "Strategic 
Lawsuit Against Public Participation").  (This is why some people want 
to post anonymously).

Also, there is a post attributed to Paul Keating shortly after the 
lawsuit was filed (keating is a domain attorney who is on the board of 
investors of DomainTools.com and who is the managing director of the 
company that hold the DomainTools trademark) that says things such as:

"...So, file an action seeking damages, serve it, claim damages not to 
exceed $10,000 and wait for a default. Then try to enforce the default. 
The reason for the damage limit is to force them into a situation of 
spending more than $10,000 to defend in AZ or default. ..."
http://www.thedomains.com/2012/05/30/berryhill-gets-a-finding-of-reverse-domain-name-hijacking-defending-a-udrp-on-elk-com/

As a result of all this the court has been asked to award monetary 
judgements against Domain Tools and the law firm of Derek Newman AND 
have them both labeled as "vexatious litigants."  There are also five 
different stories as to who is actually the parent company of Domain 
Tools so the court has been asked to require Domain Tools to explain the 
apparent discrepancies on the court record.