Below is a brief overview of Register.com v. Verio, Inc., 356 F.3d 393 (2d Cir. 2004):
–Register.com sued Verio for violating the terms of use of its WHOIS database, which Verio used to get information on who registered domain names with Register.com to offer web services to the registrants.
- As part of receiving the information from WHOIS, Register.com’s terms stated that the domain name registrant information, which consisted of email, phone number and mailing address, could not be used for marketing purposes. The terms of use were, however, proffered after the domain name registrant information was presented to the user of the WHOIS database.
–VERIO claimed there was no contract as it never agreed to the terms, and in any event any user of the WHOIS site could receive the information before seeing the terms.
- The court said that this argument may only have worked if Verio used the WHOIS database once, but Verio did it every day with full knowledge of the terms.
–The Second Circuit held that Verio’s continued use of Register.com’s WHOIS database constituted consent to Verio’s terms of use, expressly rejecting Verio’s argument that they were not enforceable because the user had not clicked an “I agree” icon.