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Verisign Granted DNS Lookup Patent
mattgick writes "The Register has a story on how verisign was granted the DNS lookup patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,560,634). Scripts which check to see if a domainname has been taken would be in violation with this patent. A discussion on this subject is going on over here."
Atleast they didn't patten DNS lookups. Imagine having to memorize every IP address?
Misleading topic heading.
A discussion on this subject is going on over here
/. that one right now so we don't have to worry about monitoring TWO discussions on the same topic!
Let's go ahead and
To me it looks like companies are going to stop offering services and just sue the shit of everyone for their IP. Scary thought, looks like the patent office needs to take a closer look at all these tech patents they are giving out these days.
If you want to complain, go here:
http://65.205.249.60
Four years ago I was awarded a patent for human respiration while indoors. Now that humans have gotten used to the luxury, I will start asking for my royalties.
Oh My God! You slashdotted ICANN! You bastards!
Oh, wait, they aren't that cool anyways
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
So what exactly is the difference between having a human/monkey/pigeon do something as opposed to writing a script that does it?
When both accomplish the same thing in the end.
Now to start train my legion of patent violating monkeys and pigeons. Accepting applications now.
They're not interested in protecting what is covered by the patent, they're interested in making money. Sue the big players like Register.com, GoDaddy, eNom, BulkRegister, Tucows, etc. Who cares if people without money are infringing?
It would seem that the corps are well on the way to pushing this society down a path of Doom Spiral. I don't think I exaggerate when I say every one of us is now guilty of some egregious crime against corporations, whether we wrote some patent-infringing code, looked under the hood of the copy-extortion schemes built into our gadgets, or wrote something bad about scientology.
So far as I can tell, we've essentially made being a free thinker illegal in the United States. I'm glad that the UK and Australia are following suit, so that we can have a nice global village under the control of Microsoft, Verisign, and maybe a little Union Carbide and Monsanto for your physical health.
How did things get this bad? Why aren't we meeting on a weekly basis to take action against this annoying destruction of the public domain?
Oh, look! Matrix Reloaded is out! Gotta go.
fifth sigma, inc.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
2) If so, how did they show this? If not, how did they get the patent?
3) How is it an original and inventive solution to a problem?
4) Does it cover any scripts that perform the task, or is it specifically a scripting solution that is patented? In other words, if I were to compile a binary to do the same thing, would this be a distinct solution and could I patent that please?
5) Do american lawyers/judges have as little understanding of how computer systems work as this suggests?
So I don't have a problem when American companies get their IP rights secured by patents such that the invested taxpayers money will give some revenues
By that reasoning, all American taxpayers should reap the benefits of said patents.
Furthermore despite having to leave the U.S. and return to Canada when my H1B expired (and post-9/11/01, my Labour Cert. as premilinary step for a Green Card was in indefinite limbo), I was and am an American taxpayer, so I too should benefit. Come to think of it, there are a lot of other foreigners who are American taxpayers. (Of course, to soothe your pro-American stance, this isn't quite correct: despite paying American taxes, as a non-citizen I was not entitled to many of the benefits they pay for, i.e. state unemployment insurance, for one. The point about taxpayers in general vs. corporations is correct, though.).
You could've hired me.
And the really interesting bit - for country TLDs (.uk), it "display[s] a predetermined number of domains based on the gross domestic product of the associated countries". Wierd.
One last point - the WHOIS lookup at register.com actually doesn't meet this patent - the patent specifically says that the output is formatted into HTML, while WHOIS at register.com outputs an image (no doubt to prevent cut & pasting of the output).
I patented people talking in caps in sentences in comment posting websites, so take that!
--------
Free your mind.
This may sound like a flammable comment, but can anyone think of a *method* patent that you would deem actually worthy its patentability? Every modern method patent seems to be something that just doesn't pass the "innovative" component of the patent test (The "work" must be new, non-obvious, and innovative to be worthy of a patent, IIRC, though of course "innovative" in particular is a woefully vague term).
Conversely, a great many of these popularly "bad patents" -- e.g. one-click shopping, online auctioning/reverse auctioning, hyperlinking, and now multiple-simultaneous-DNS-lookups -- are process/method patents.
Maybe we should just scrap 'method' patents? How much of the problem would that solve? What sorts of innovation would a lack of method patents fail to protect? This is certainly (IMHO) a shining example of NON-innovation that has been awarded patent protection.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
USPTO for 6,560,634
I don't have the time, but could someone answer the above?
Perhaps we could get a new moderation category: -1: Joke made everytime topic comes up.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Now you cough up the money!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
That's an awfully large-sized brush you're using to paint us with, Anonymous Eurocoward.
You just made almost a dozen categorical, unconstructive criticisms of the populace of an entire country. Interesting how, if I were to write something similar about "Arabs" or "Chinese people," I'd be accused of intolerance of even racism. But it remains ever-popular and completely OK to say things like "All Americans are nuts." Incredible. This is the attitude that many Americans (myself included) find so off-putting -- that somehow intolerance and prejudice is bad, except when it's directed towards Americans.
I'm not saying the USA doesn't have problems, I'm just saying that your snobbish, prejudiced attitude is not going to help us solve them.
And your comment "and even the colo(u)rful language they've brutally raped"... I can't even begin to understand what you mean by this idiotic statement. English has always been an "open source" language -- evolving, changing, adapting and improving with its times and settings. There is no central committee regulating the English language, unlike, say, French.
so what if you're going to get modded to a flamebait "-2". if you believe so strongly against the US log yourself in, and them tell me what you think. if you are swayed in your opinions so easily that a movie can change your view of hate to pity, i pity you. and as an american i will respond to your statement.
...and even the colo(u)rful language they've brutally raped.
Fuck...the US.
slow down there son, it's not our fault one of our companies patented this. clam down
Their patent legislation
yes, this is a sad state and something horribly worng with the united states. there are citizens fight this every day and i really am against software patents in particular. it's unfair and unjust, i would like it changed as well
Their DMCA + enforcements
Their RIAA, MPAA, etc.
Again, i wish i could argue with you, but i feel strongly against these as well
Their Microsoft-style arrogant worldwide trusts and other übergreed corporations
now what does this mean? just because you use the word "microsoft" in a sentence doesn't mean whatever you are describing is bad or evil. our "ubergreed" corporations? the ones that made it possible for you to be on that box you are typing on today? if they are so bad, why do you use their technology?
Their "justice" system, giving justice just for rich white men
I honestly don't find the justice that the rich white men recieve as justice. the ones stealing from other americans by lying on quarterly reports just so they can sell their stocks high and not tried fairly. an uber-rich black man got away with urdering his ex wife. that's not justice either. our justice system does deliver justice, but your example makes it appear as if stealing and getting away with it is just. how?
Their gun laws
what about them? we are allowed to own them? what is so unappealing about our right to bear arms? sure criminals can get thier hands on them, but i'd rather live free with less security then all the security in the world being governed closely.
Their violency and their wars
our violency? we learned that from menbers of the EU. france and germany have fought for hundreds of years. we even help the french out a couple times. we didn't create violence, but we are not the only ones using it.
Their presidents and other politicians
how... HOW do you find this an argument to "Fuck" the us? what about our presidents and politicians? we have known for years politicians are sneaky and lie. most of our horrible joke float around this concept.
Their constitution
if you for one second are going against the constitution of the united states, you are a utter moron. what is wrong with our constitution? it guarantees liberty, freedom, justice. it's not our consitution that is wrong it's how it's being used, or the lack thereof. have you even read it? it's a pretty good deal that enables me to live my life the way i wnat it. The constitution is what makes america great. not our money, not our military, not our horrible rock music. it's the constitution. i stand by the constitution my forefathers wrote before i stand behind my current leader.
Their culture
our culture? which one? american is a place of many cultures of many people. it's not just one "pop" mtv culture -- there are many other way s to experience life aside from the glitz of music tlevision.
Their hypocrisy and their stupidity
how for one second do you find english colo(u)rful? it's an ugly germanic language. latin languages make so much more sence and have a beauty and a flow that feels like water coming off your tounge. as for our hipocrisy -- there are 300,000,000 of us. it's easy for half to say one thing and the other half to do another.
They're all just nuts.
can't argue. we are a little coo c
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Oh well in that case...
;)
The world wide web was created at CERN by Tim Berners Lee, born in London England. As you also don't have a problem with American companies getting money back from their creation of 'the whole internet', then you also don't mind if Mr Berners Lee collects revenues from non-British companies?
I'd like to think you were joking. The granting of the Verisign multiple lookup patent is ridiculous.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
About two years ago I got into the "game" of buying up expired domain names, simply for fun. THere was an expired name I wanted and I got hooked on watching http://www.namewinner.com/ and other such ebay-style domain name bidding services. Over the last two years the big stink seems to be Verisign was pouty because namewinner and other such services (enom, snapnames, etc.) were making some big $$$ of of expired names. AFAIK, it was something like a grand to get into enoms "expired domain name club" just to be able to bid on names. I think playgirl.com went for something like 25k on namewinner.com.
Another thing verisign was pissed off about was that these clubs knew when domain names would be released, so you'd have a few servers *pounding* verisign for a certain amount of time, trying to get the domain names. Also, the various individual attempts by doing a who query every 5-10 minutes to see if it expired couldn't have helped either.
On one hand, I don't blame them, for the good of everyone. On the other hand, Verisign owns snapnames (or is affiliated with), and signed some of the bigger domain name contracts (ultsearch.com transferred his names over if i recall correctly) for what I'm sure amounted to special privilieges when registering domain names.
I stay away from Verisign. Them being a "trust provider" is a joke. I don't trust them enough to do my whois lookups on their site just because I'm not 100% certain they're not monitoring all the domain names that people search for (and that they won't sell that list to the highest bidder).
jay
You certainly won't find any prior art for it at the patent office.
Any spoon would be too big.
So instead of HTML, just give your output in xml and you are not in violation.
US Patent 6,368,227: Method of Swinging on a Swing I truly don't know how they didn't get busted for prior art on this, or obvousness. According to patent lawyers I know, the guy got away with it because it's an exceptionally well-written patent.
and US Patent 3,216,423: APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIGUGAL FORCE, which I think is actually very non-obvious, and I doubt there's much prior art on it. But I'm not surprised it was never productized.
blah blah blah
Not only that, but we'll have to modify the nslookup and host commands so they no longer tell you that a FQDN wasn't found, since that would be contributory infringement.
Also, all those browsers that have done URL completion for years will have to stop doing it, because it's also a (retroactive) violation of this patent.
So you'll have to specify whitehouse.gov or whitehouse.org; your browser won't be permitted to guess whether you want politics or porn.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
And pretty much every web browser out there..
..
And they have been around MUCH longer than the patent filing date of 1998!
Go download an old version of netscape prior to 1998, or a copy of lynx proir to 1998..
Type in a URL location of say.. "theregister" (example in the article.) the browser searches.. theregister.com, and it it's not found, theregister.org, and theregister.net..