Antitrust law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of owners of .com website domains, accusing Verisign Inc. and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of maintaining an illegal monopoly, charging excessive fees amounting to billions of dollars in allegedly illicit gains.
A California consumer filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Sept. 4, 2026, and states that, since 2021, Verisign’s price has risen roughly 30% to $10.26 per domain, despite declining actual costs of providing registry services across the industry. The lawsuit alleges that Verisign’s prices are the result of a contract between it and ICANN that entitles Verisign to a permanent monopoly over the .com registry, and that ICANN, the organization originally intended to promote competition for .com, now shares in Verisign’s monopoly profits.
“Web domain owners and operators are often small businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits or sole proprietors, seeking to make a name and a living through their goods and services,” said Steve W. Berman, managing partner and co-founder of Hagens Berman. “Every year, Verisign extracts nearly a billion dollars in overcharges from these ordinary people and businesses. We believe Verisign has maintained an illegal monopoly in the .com domain space — where there are over 160 million active registrations worldwide — answering only to its shareholders.”
Every .com registrant pays Verisign’s fee, regardless of registrar. It is embedded in every transaction, at every registrar, without exception. If you registered a .com domain name for personal or business use since 2022, find out your rights.
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Verisign’s financial filings indicate it costs Verisign approximately $3 per domain to operate .com domains, and comparable registries around the world charge an average of between $5 and $6. Verisign charges more than double that, generating operating margins exceeding 67% — higher than Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and more than five times the S&P 500 index average, according to the lawsuit.
In 2025 alone, Verisign returned more than $1 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends, which attorneys allege is not funded by innovation, but by fees extracted from a captive customer base. “These results would be impossible in a competitive market,” the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, Verisign obtained its permanent monopoly through a years-long campaign of coercion against ICANN — the private nonprofit that oversees the domain name system. Verisign now has a 100% share of the .com registry market and a contractual right to keep it — indefinitely — through a “presumptive right of renewal” that forecloses competitive bidding, the lawsuit states.
Every .com domain registration or renewal passes through a two-tier system. Verisign operates the registry, or the wholesale layer, and thousands of registrars (companies like GoDaddy, Namecheap and Cloudflare) compete at the retail level to sell domains to consumers. But every registrar must pay Verisign the same non-negotiable wholesale fee for every .com domain registered, according to attorneys. That fee is embedded in the price consumers pay, regardless of which registrar is used.
“Rarely does a monopoly exist in such black and white terms as we believe exists here,” Berman said. “Verisign didn’t build .com. It bought it, made sure no one could compete for it, and has since raised prices at every opportunity.”
The lawsuit includes comments from registrars about Verisign’s monopoly: GoDaddy, the world’s largest registrar, has written that “from an end user’s perspective, Verisign’s .COM does not have natural competitors to constrain retail pricing within the market” and that “[t]here is no effective competition to assist in establishing what is a reasonable price for .COM.”
The lawsuit also cites bipartisan calls for action from both government agencies and members of Congress. In 2024, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration wrote in a statement that, “a reduction in .com prices would be in the best interest of the public.” The same year, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jerrold Nadler wrote a letter stating, “Verisign and ICANN may have a collusive relationship” in which Verisign has “used its monopoly power… to capture ICANN and its millions of consumers” and urged the Department of Justice to “investigate Verisign for violations of antitrust laws, and, if necessary, hold the Company accountable.”
“Verisign is ripping off the owners of 150 million .com websites by charging over $10 annually for each .com registration, making over $1 billion with its predatory pricing scheme that the Company then uses to pad its shareholders’ pockets,” they added.
The lawsuit seeks to end the alleged anticompetitive behavior through a court injunction and seeks to recoup losses suffered by domain holders harmed by Verisign’s alleged anticompetitive practices. The class action brings claims of violation of the Sherman Act, as well as for monopolization, restraint of trade, and unfair competition under state consumer-protection laws.
Hagens Berman is a global plaintiffs’ rights complex litigation law firm with a tenacious drive for achieving real results for those harmed by corporate negligence and fraud. Since its founding in 1993, the firm’s determination has earned it numerous national accolades, awards and titles of “Most Feared Plaintiff’s Firm,” MVPs and Trailblazers of class-action law. More about the law firm and its successes can be found at hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260902091535/en/
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