The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has voted to approve a settlement with VeriSign that allows the company to raise the price of domain registrations.

The organisation overseeing the world's top level domains voted 9 to 5 in favour of the settlement. Board members in the coming days will be allowed to post statements about their votes on Icann's web site.

Verisign operates the infrastructure behind the world's .com internet domains under an exclusive license. The settlement ends a lawsuit that the company filed after the 2003 Site Finder debacle, in which the company tried to reroute internet traffic to unregistered and mistyped domain names to a Versign owned website.

The arrangement grants Verisign the right to raise prices for.com domain registrations by 7 per cent annually in four of the next six years. The company also agreed to pay ICANN an annual contribution of $6m to $12m.

Verisign currently charges $6 per domain per year and the price hike could boosts its revenues by as much as $140m between now and 2012.

A group of domain registrars has attacked the settlement, claiming that the deal provides Versign an unwarranted financial windfall and allows the company an uncontested renewal of its contract in 2012.

Verisign said that the settlement is similar to the arrangements that it made for the .net domain last year. In a statement, the company said that it was pleased with the decision and called the agreement straightforward.

While the ICANN board's approval removes a major hurdle, the new domain registration rules still require approval by the US Department of Commerce.