Verio Trademarking 'Whois'?

thaJungle was the first to pass along the buzz. "Looks like owning all the bandwidth in America isn't good enough for Verio; they apparently want to own WHOIS as well. In fact, they trademarked it..." Well, not exactly. I talked to Verio PR and legal. They own "whois.net," and when they filed to trademark that, they filed for the standalone name too as a matter of course. Since there's just a bit of prior use, the registration was rejected; aware now of its history, they're dropping the application. Update: 02/05 by J : Brian McWilliams has a more informative and skeptical story at internetnews.com.

Comments

No penalty for attempting to scam the USPO

[kevin805]

One of the problems with the patent office is that there is no penalty for trying to trademark or patent something that isn't eligible. There should at least be some really hefty fine, like 10% of the revenues you would have gained from having a US government monopoly on someone else's idea.

--Kevin

Re:No penalty for attempting to scam the USPO

[Gromer]

I really like this idea. There are a couple problems with it, though.

First of all, it is essential that the penalty not go to the USPTO, or else they will have an incentive to deny patents and trademarks, even if they are valid. The money would have to go back to the US Treasury.

Second, and more difficult to resolve, is the following. Rules have to be uniform, by definition, so if such a rule applies to huge companies, it must apply equally to everyone who applies for patents and trademarks, including small businesses, and individuals with good ides. Such individuals do not have the resources to throughly research the validity of their claim, the existence of prior use, and so fourth. Thus, we are caught between a rock an a hard place. If the penalty is substantial enough to make any difference to a huge corporation, it would be so big that individuals and small businesses simply could not afford the risk of applying for patents or trademarks. Thus, big corporatrions would actually come out better for a rule like this, since they get to exploit the unpatented ideas and uncopyrighted trade names of their smaller competitors. I'm not sure if there is any way around this.

One could try to qualify it by saying that there is a penalty for intentionally applying for an ineligible mrak or patent, but proving intent is incredibly difficult even in a court of law, and with the case load the USPTO has to deal with, it would be totally impossible. One could also try applying different penalties based on ability to pay, but there are a number of legal problems with that- government services charge uniform fees rgardless of ability to pay. Lawsuits are the only case I know of in which ability to pay plays a role, but the USPTO does not have the resources to bring lawsuits over such matters, and does not have the legal authority to act as a court in its own right. Fundamentally, the problem is that although it is obvious to us that the application was ineligible, there is no way of legally defining obviousness.

Any ideas?

Registering Domain Names

[jd]

This should require a licence. Qualifications to obtain a licence would include:

• A positive IQ of more than 1 digit
• The ability to read
• Understanding the acronym FAQ
• Understanding the acronym RFC
• Understanding why said acronyms are relevent
• Knowing at least one place to get them
• A working knowledge of how the domain name system works

OR

• Being able to recite The Parrot Sketch, and
• Being able to recite The Penguin Sketch

Fsck'ing Whois Leeches

[pb]

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Thank you for fact-checking

[HMV]

This bit of news could have quickly turned into the latest knee-jerk "they patented WHAT?!?!?" story. Instead, with a bit of checking, you were able to hopefully circumvent at least the most ridiculous part of the submission and let readers know what the real issue of the story is. Hope to see a good bit more of that.

Re:Thank you for fact-checking

[whoop]

To me, this more indicates how the Verio organization works. First, get a domain. Then file patent papers for anything that could possibly associated with it (most likely by the lawyer types). Is this good? Their priority is in getting exclusivity, no matter what.

Sure we all know Whois has been around for ages, thanks to Algore. And (probably) the techie types that set up the page know it already exists. And there is ZERO communication between any of them. Ah, what a wonderous day we live in. If someone invents a time machine, I'll go back to the late 1800's and make sure they disolve the patent office. They were on to something. ;)

Ohhh, I cant wait til that Verio guy calls again..

[Randy Rathbun]

For the past three weeks this salesdrone from Verio has been calling me - every time he does he ruins my thought process on whatever bit of code I am working on. Yeah, I have told him to take me off his list, but the next time I am really gonna let him know what I think of Verio...

Thanks Slashdot! You just brought some joy into my life!

Re:WTF??

[jamiemccarthy]

I don't think it was an attempted scam. Lawyers are busy people, and when the paperwork for "whois.net" dropped on their desk, they probably didn't realize that the generic term was already in use. A case of miscommunication, unless I miss my guess.

Jamie McCarthy

Thanks Verio!

[Signal 11]

Thanks verio! Rather than doing something stupid legally, you guys did the Right Thing and withdrew the request. Thanks!

/.'d

[Signal 11]

verio got slashdotted. "Oh my god, you killed Apache, you bastards!"

http://home.verio.com/

(r)

[Anonymous Coward]

I(tm) Really(r) Don't(c) Enjoy(p) All(tm) Those(tm)(r) Patent(r) Stuff(tm). At(tm) "What Point"(tm) In(r) Time(c) Did(r) Trademarks(p) A(c)+(p) Product(tm) Become(c) More(r) Important(r) Then(r) The(p) Product(r) Itself(c)?

"What a world... What a world.."
Sig (c)+(p)+(tm)+(r)+(whatever) by "The wizard of oz"

True story

[ucblockhead]

Back in the dinosaur ages, oh about 1988 or thereabouts, there was a company that created a really cool compression tool which created files with an "arc" extension. (This was on those icky old DOS systems, Unix guys.) Everybody loved this tool. Everybody used it for everything.

Then came along another company. This second company released a knockoff that could also decompress "*.arc" files as a shareware program. The first company went ballistic. They sued. They got a judge to agree that they, and only they, had legal rights to the ".arc" extension.

So what happened? Well, the second company was forced to modify their program to not decompress ".arc" files. Instead, it demanded that the file be named ".zip".

The first company went out of business. The users were so pissed off by the intimidation tactics they employeed that almost overnight, it became "uncool" to use the ".arc" extension and sales plummetted.

And that, boys and girls, is why we call archives "zip files".

So remember, the law can control who gets to call their products certain things, but it can't control who you buy from.

Re:True story

[hummer]

Then, this guy Phil Katz comes along, with a new shareware program called PKARC, which is faster

ha ha... pkarc? as in noise a chicken makes?

/me scratches and pecks at the dust.

pk! pk! pk! pkAARc!!

alright officer, i'll come quietly.
hummer

Re:Ohhh, I cant wait til that Verio guy calls agai

[Windigo The Feral (N]

Pspeed dun said (while replying to someone):

Yeah, I have told him to take me off his list" Then he can be fined for continuing to call you. I wish I knew where to look this stuff up, but this was a big deal when I was working for a company that wrote auto-dialers for call centers.

Fined a good amount, at that--$500 per offense, $1500 per offense (if you can prove it was a willful offense--in other words, they knew damn well they were doing a Bad Thing and did it anyways).

Once you say the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list and send me a copy of your do not call policy", they are supposed to maintain your name on a do-not-call list for ten years, and they are supposed to provide a copy of the do-not-call policy on request. If they call you after you've requested to be put on a do-not-call list, or if they claim they don't have a list or policy, you have officially got them by the balls and can go directly to court and claim your $500 (or $1500, if you can show there's been a pattern of abuse of this kind with the company and people have successfully sued them under the law--ChemLawn and AT&T are fairly notorious for this).

In most states, $500-$1500 is small enough that you can actually file in small claims court--no lawyers required. If the company doesn't send someone to court, you can get a summary judgement and the judge can actually put a lien out on the company to pay you your money (even garnishing profits if necessary), because if they don't pay they are officially in contempt of court.

There is a very thorough page at Junkbusters, including a handy little script that lists literally EVERYTHING you can potentially screw a telemarketer over with on that law (not just refusing to put you on a do-not-call list, btw-- collection and/or telemarketing calls after 9 pm local time are also illegal, for starters). Needless to say, I do use the Junkbusters script, and telemarketers learn one way or another that when I say I don't want any bloody calls I damned well mean I don't want any calls, damnit :)=

Re:Yeah, but...

[gargle]

How about if you had to make a sizable (I know, define sizable) deposit that would be forfeited if your application were turned down? That would tend to discourage the opportunists.

There already is a sizable non-refundable deposit, it's called a patent application fee. The application fee and the lawyer's fees can easily go up to tens of thousands of dollars. All this does is make it difficult for small inventors, while having no impact at all on the big companies.