Park Avenue Capital LLC sued the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an institution within the World Bank Group that facilitates the resolution of disputes between foreign investors and sovereign states under international investment treaties.
The dispute stems from Park Avenue’s contract to offer .md second-level domain names in North America, Latin America, Australia and any other English- and Spanish-speaking countries. Park Avenue, which does business as MaxMD, represents healthcare technology.
The original 20-year contract expired in 2022. Park Avenue is challenging its non-renewal, arguing that the contract provided for two consecutive 20-year terms. The company is also challenging regulatory and other measures by Moldova that it claims affected its contractual rights.
The company initially tried to initiate arbitration under the terms of its contract, but Moldova did not go along. Park Avenue is now seeking to have the case resolved by ICSID.
The background is as follows.
In March 1994, the Institute of Information Sciences at the University of Southern California (which then served as IANA) approved a request to create the ccTLD .md. In May 1995, the ccTLD .md was delegated to the Republican Center for Informatics of Moldova (“RCI”).
In 1998, RCI contracted with Domain Name Trust, a U.S. company, for the rights to operate and oversee the ccTLD .md. (On September 19, 2001, RCI was transformed into and succeeded by MoldData, a state-owned enterprise).
Meanwhile, Domain Name Trust sold its rights under the contract to operate the ccTLD to DotMD, LLC, which began bankruptcy proceedings in October 2002. In February 2003, after proceedings in the bankruptcy court, the court ordered, as part of the settlement of the case, that authority for the .md domain name be returned back to the State of Moldova.
On February 1, 2003, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court entered a final order authorizing Morton Levin, the trustee in bankruptcy of Dot MD LCC, to transfer to MoldData all right, title and interest of the trustee in and to the .md domain, including technological and operational control.
This was done so that MoldData would be “the sole authorized sponsoring organization, technical contact and administrative contact with authority to take any action on behalf of the .md national top-level domain name.”
However, 23 years ago, MoldData made a decision after which MaxMD became the exclusive provider of .md domain names in the United States and more than 90 countries around the world.
And now the company is suing to extend its right for another 20 years.
Unfortunately, the details of this undoubtedly curious contract are still unknown to the general public.
