search service when users attempted to go to non-existent or domain names. ICANN asserted that Verisign had overstepped the terms of its contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce, which in essence grants Verisign the right to operate the DNS for and , and Verisign shut down the service. Subsequently, Verisign filed a lawsuit against ICANN in February 2004, seeking to gain clarity over what services it could offer in the context of its contract with ICANN. The claim was moved from federal to California state court in August 2004. In late 2005, Verisign and ICANN announced a proposed settlement which defined a process for the introduction of new registry services in the registry. The documents concerning these settlements are available at ICANN.org. The ICANN comments mailing list archive documents some of the criticisms that have been raised regarding the settlement. Additionally, Verisign was involved in the matter decided by the Ninth Circuit. 2003: Gives up domain In keeping with ICANN's charter to introduce competition to the domain name marketplace, Verisign agreed to give up its operation of top-level domain in 2003 in exchange for a continuation of its contract to operate , which, at the time had more than 34 million registered addresses. 2005: Retains domain In mid-2005, the existing contract for the operation of expired and five companies, including Verisign, bid for management of it. Verisign enlisted numerous IT and telecom heavyweights including Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, MCI, and others, to assert that Verisign had a perfect record operating . They proposed Verisign continue to manage the DNS due to its critical importance as the domain underlying numerous "backbone" network services. Verisign was also aided by the fact that several of the other bidders were based outside the United States, which raised concerns in national security circles. On June 8, 2005, ICANN announced that Verisign had been approved to operate until 2011. More information on the bidding process is available at ICANN. On July 1, 2011, ICANN announced that VeriSign's approval to operate .net was extended another six years, until 2017. 2010: Data breach and disclosure controversy In February 2012, Verisign revealed that their network security had been repeatedly breached in 2010. Verisign stated that the breach did not impact the Domain Name System (DNS) that they maintain, but would not provide details about the loss of data. Verisign was widely criticized for not disclosing the breach earlier