To dismiss Verisign’s expert testimony — .XYZ seeks

Fresh TLD firm claims some expert testimony ought to not be allowed.

.XYZ is asking the court to dismiss expert testimony from four expert witnesses in Verisign’s false advertising lawsuit against the fresh top level domain firm.

Some of the court filings are heavily redacted, leaving out the juicy details many in the domain name want to know. All expert witness notes were filed under seal.

For example, just what kind of deal did .XYZ have with Network Solutions when the latter gave away hundreds of thousands of .xyz domain names?

Based on evidence filings, it appears .XYZ was paying Network Solutions millions of dollars for an advertising campaign at the same time.

.XYZ is asking the court to throw out (pdf) expert testimony from accountant Mark Berenblut regarding how the deal with Network Solutions was accounted for.

And how is Verisign claiming that .XYZ’s alleged false advertising has damaged it?

Verisign hired expert witness Lauren Kindler to evaluate the losses. .XYZ finds fault in the note (pdf), saying Kindler assumed that all XYZ’s sales were due to false advertising and leaped to the conclusion that those sales caused .net to decline.

I’m curious what .net has to do with this, since the allegations are regarding disparaging .com. And if Verisign states .xyz has hurt .com, how is it calculating that compared to fresh TLDs in general? During Verisign’s investor conference calls, it has attributed the fall in .net, in part, to fresh top level domains in general.

.XYZ also wants Verisign employee Andrew Simpson’s expert testimony (pdf) held back from the trial. Simpson explained the number of available .com domains, but there’s some disagreement over availability of names vs. good names.

Additionally, .XYZ claims a survey (pdf) by expert witness Michael Mazis regarding whether a .xyz blog post was misleading ought to not be allowed.