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Lawyers for Gary Kremen, the long-suffering rightful owner of the sex.com domain, issued a press release last week announcing that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had issued an order dismissing the most recent appeal of a $65,000,000 judgment against Stephen Michael Cohen, effectively ending the decade-plus sex.com saga.

Effectively, that is, because Cohen is apparently able to appeal the decision, however the court has warned him that it would "consider imposing sanctions" if he were to do so.

The announcement (justifiably) plays up the significance of the case as a landmark in Internet law and one of the really epic stories of the Internet age. It even references a book that is apparently to be published on the case:

This domain name battle has been so dynamic and had such an impact on the Internet industry that Quercus Publishing PLC has published a new book on the Kremen v. Cohen suit. Authored by Kieren McCarthy, the book is entitled, "Sex.com: One Domain, Two Men, Twelve Years and the Brutal Battle for the Jewel in the Internet's Crown."

I really only take issue with one thing, which is the decision to refer to a URL that pointed for years to a porno-site banner farm as "the jewel in the Internet's crown." Call me old fashioned, but I feel like there may be a bit of a sophistication gap in that comparison. And I'm not even English.

I do understand the comparison, however, in terms of a small thing having an enormous value - in this case, six characters and a punctuation mark leading to Cohen owing Kremen an eight-figure US-dollar amount.

Sex.com is possibly the most inherently valuable domain name, in terms of the amount of type-in traffic it did, and probably still does, receive, along with the nature of that traffic and the potential for turning it into clicks - particularly clicks that eventually lead to money spent.

For those really really late to the ballgame, I'll try to sum up the back story in a few sentences. Kremen registered the domain back in '94. Cohen used a fraudulent fax to convince the registrar (Network Solutions) to transfer the domain to his possession. He set up a banner/links farm on the page that reportedly generated between $50,000 and $500,000 per month, and continued to operate that site until 2000, when the courts ordered Network Solutions to return the domain to Kremen. Cohen has since been appealing rulings that he pay Kremen $65,000,000, an amount that includes $40,000,000 in lost earnings. Kremen has since sued VeriSign and Network Solutions for, you know, giving his super-valuable domain to some guy without asking him. Cohen also left the country during the legal-battle period and was arrested in Mexico in 2005.

You know, it might actually be an interesting book.

As far as the press release was concerned, though, it seems worth commemorating the apparent conclusion of the case simply for the impact it had on the development of the notion of ownership relative to domains. Particularly in the July 2003 ruling that domains do, in fact, constitute property in the traditional sense - the ruling that enabled Kremen to sue VeriSign over the unauthorized transfer.

The announcement quoted Richard Idell, of the lawfirm Idell & Seitel, which represented Kremen in the case:

"The underlying case to this appeal rewrote the law, and shaped the history and development of the Internet as we know it. Hopefully, the result here will send a loud and clear message that the decision stands and is the future of the Internet domain name business."