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 Brett Fausett's Law Firm an Interested Party Now
posted by Mueller on Saturday March 18 2006, @06:55PM
Tom Galvin writes "If ICANN Watch is going to spotlight Bret Fauset's views, it should also point out that Bret now has a direct financial interest in seeing the ICANN-VeriSign settlement defeated. His law firm Cathcart, Collins and Kneafsey is now representing CFIT in litigation against ICANN and VeriSign.
Bret did the right thing by sending the email below to the GNSO explaining his conflict. But he hasn't, I don't believe, included this conflict on his blog so readers know where his business interests lie. He should do that.
Actually, wouldn't it be great if everyone disclosed their interest? I will start, I am a former VeriSign employee who now serves as a VeriSign consultant on ICANN communications issues. How about Marilyn Cade goes next?"
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Dear Councilors,
On Friday, my law firm was formally retained to represent the Coalition For Internet Transparency ("CFIT") (http://www.cfit.info/) in its lawsuit over the anti-competitive award of .COM and .NET to Verisign. For those of
you not familiar with this, you can read details of the lawsuit on the ICANN website:
http://icann.org/general/litigation-cfit.htm
Other lawyers at my firm will handle the day-to-day responsibilities on the case, but I will be providing advice and assistance from time to time.
If you have any questions about this or how this representation may affect my work for the ALAC and Council, please let me know. By a separate
e-mail, I am sending an updated Statement of Interest to Glen for inclusion on the website.
Bret
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Brett Fausett's Law Firm an Interested Party Now
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Bret (one 't', not two) DID disclose this on his blog, in the Podcast of March 7, 2006 [lextext.com]. Play the MP3, and fast forward to a few minutes before the end. The disclosure, in audio, begins with "My law firm has been hired by CFIT". Bret isn't going to handle the day-to-day litigation, but will help tell them "where the bodies are buried." :)
As for me, no conflicts of interest to report -- I'm a domain registrant like millions of other people. The closest relationship I have to VeriSign is that I own VerisignSucks.com [verisignsucks.com]. :) I'm not a litigant, or have a financial interest in any party who is a litigant.
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Wow. Verisign's officially calling me out for not being transparent? What next, you folks want to call me a monopolist too?
Here are a couple of facts. First, my disclosures are both on my website (my podcast, which preceded the GNSO-ALAC disclosures, by the way) and in the GNSO/ALAC public records. Second, neither I nor my law firm has an interest in the *outcome* of the litigation. We're paid by the hour, win or lose. Yes, like all lawyers we very much want to win on behalf of our clients, but I believe the statement that we have "a direct financial interest in seeing the ICANN-VeriSign settlement defeated" is somewhat misleading. We are certainly being paid to work toward that end in the California courts, but the people with a direct financial interest are the parties to the lawsuit (and more generally, registrants everywhere).
So, Tom, when will we get more complete disclosure from Verisign on the people it hires? Those folks from the things called the"Centers for Competitive Studies," or whatever their names were, didn't just suddenly decide to show up in Vancouver because they became interested in ICANN overnight. And what about the paid bloggers who post pro-Verisign statements under pseudonyms?
Bret
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