The folks who keep on insisting that ICANN doesn’t have to comply with a KY court order, have little or no understanding of US law. that order stands in every single court in US. ICANN can appeal to change jurisdiction away from KY to the federal district court in san diego or via local California judge who can claim CALIF has jurisdiction. Getting a California court to rule that it has jurisdiction means that the case then moves to federal district court to see who has jurisdiction: KY, CA, or feds. A Federal judge could order KY to file it’s case in California, or order a trial on the issue in federal court, but I think most likely would leave jurisdiction as is. In fact if KY went to federal court, they could ask for a summary judgement, which would allow judge to make a ruling (if they chose to ) without hearing the case (this is based on the briefs filed by the attorneys and the recommendation of the judge’s clerk.
Bottom line these will most likely remained locked until this is all resolved (all appeals exhausted). Now if they remained locked and case remains unresolved, it’s likely the domains will continue to work as long as Domain is pointing to a valid/operating DNS server.
Before wasting time and money changing registrars to a non US entity, talk to a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer, but have discussed legality, jurisdictions, etc. with a number of lawyers. My advice is to move your domains to TLD not controlled by US (.com, .net, .edu, .org, .mil, .gov or .us) located organization.
nobody wants to hear/accept this because the problems it can cause to our industry now and in the future. BUT don’t make a bunch of expensive (whether $$ or labor) moves until you have talked to a lawyer who knows about internet domains, jurisdiction issues and is allowed to practice in US federal court. Otherwise you’re guessing, based on speculation of all of us here.
Since I don’t promote online gaming in North America, I’m not willing to spend the money on a lawyer to find out.