Reglikedomain industry desk

Monte Cahn: Buyout of Moniker Violated Google Contract

Moniker founder states Oversee.net contract with Google violated in Moniker buyout.

Monte Cahn has filed a response (pdf) to Oversee.net’s motion to dismiss certain claims he brought against his former employer.

One of the more interesting claims in his response relates to the Moniker buyout from Seevast and how it may have violated Oversee.net’s contract with ad provider Google:

Additionally, since filing the First Amended Complaint, it has come to our attention that there was a contract in place between Google and Oversee during the time Oversee was negotiating with Seevast and Cahn, which Defendants had knowledge of, and which directly effected Cahn’s performance under the MIP. We are of the understanding and belief that the buyout of Moniker was in direct violation of the Google contract, and therefore Cahn never even had the ability to earn the $13 million bonus.

Oversee.net’s contract with Google is for domain name parking. This could be related to Moniker’s TrafficClub monetization service. Oversee.net shut down this service following the buyout and migrated clients to DomainSponsor instead. Although TrafficClub was a “split testing” service for domain parking, it was down to basically one parking provider at the time of buyout.

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