US Federal Court Judge, Manuel J. Real issued a preliminary injunction yesterday where ICANN now have rights to terminate RegisterFly’s accreditation asap.The provision for current and accurate data for all their Domain Name was also ordered by the Court. They did not meet the needs of a temporary restraining order (issued last April).

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers) will now allow immediate termination for of its Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) with the registrar.

RegisterFly have received allegations of mismanagement and fraud extending over a year, and is the subject of related litigation (by a former domain holder). The extent of the damage is unknown; refusal of RegisterFly to provide accurate registrant data to ICANN is stipulated in the RAA.

The ruling pushes away the arbitration clause required by the RAA, and orders RegisterFly to give all registrant data to ICANN. Registerfly did not comply with the TRO order, frustrating registrants who were in the same state of limbo as ten days ago. Some data may have been lost in the power struggle for control of registrant data (that occurred between founders Kevin Medina and John Naruszewicz), when company servers were allegedly hacked to move registrant data to new servers.

ICANN is moving quickly to transfer existent domains at RegisterFly to another registrar, and to put an open invitation on their site (to solvent and stable registrars) to issue proposals for a bulk transfer of Registerfly data.

"The provision to ICANN of current and accurate data for all of RegisterFly’s Domains has also been ordered by the Court as RegisterFly failed to meet the conditions of a temporary restraining order (TRO) which the Court issued on April 16, 2007. Following the injunction, ICANN is immediately inviting statements of interest from accredited registrars starting Monday, 30 April 2007, to act as a transfer provider, so domain name registrants can gain full access to their domains. The registrar handling the transfers will temporarily hold the names and help registrants transfer to any ICANN accredited registrar of their choice."