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URLs Patented, Domain Registrars Sued
theodp writes "A newly formed company is suing Network Solutions and Register.com for infringing on its e-mail and domain naming patent, which covers assigning each member of a group a URL of the form 'name.subdomain.domain' and an e-mail address of the form 'name@subdomain.domain.'"
The World has gone mad. Beam be up i am out of here.
So when is amazon going to sue them for violating their sue-for-something-obvious-and-not-patentable patent? Not that they were the first to do such a thing, but hey, that never stopped them from getting patents before, right?
[sigh]
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
This company wouldn't have any affiliation with Microsoft would it???
Just when you thought they'd run out of silly patents to sue over, here comes another one. According to the good folks at News.com, a couple of Nizzas (the name of their company) have sued Network Solutions and Register.com. As Marguerite Reardon so eloquently puts it, "Two Internet entrepreneurs are suing Network Solutions and Register.com for allegedly infringing on their e-mail and domain naming patent." I take issue with the term entrepeneurs, as scum-sucking bottom feeders seems more appropriate, but you get the idea. Basically, they patented the method of assigning an email address of fake@name.com to the guy with the website fake.name.com. This might be the lamest excuse for a patent ever granted; a 2-year old could have come up with this idea.
I think they're a little late. Isn't there a law about that?
A good two and a half months before 1st April. Go join the queue. Behind SCO.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
According to CNET, these were the people responsible for launching the .md TLD in the USA to represent "medical doctor" when in reality, .md belongs to the Republic of Moldova. These people are definitely not scared of ruining Internet conventions when they stand in the way of a quick buck.
.com, .net, .org, .edu, .us etc., just .name because what the patent covers is selling a 3rd-level domain for web use that equates to a username on the 2nd-level domain's mailserver. (If the registrant of john.doe.name gets the john@doe.name e-mail address... and an unrelated jane.doe.name gets jane@doe.name, and the registrar of .name is keeping doe.name, smith.name, jones.name, etc. for this kind of reselling... that's what the patent covers.)
However, the one thing we can relax on is that this doesn't affect
So, this isn't exactly a sky-is-falling situation, but it's shysters trying to make a quick buck off of patent law....
I just patented freaking letters and numbers. So I am going to sue everyone! Sheesh!
I've already patented the letters U, R, and L! After Microsoft patented 1's and 0's [http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatent s.html], I had to find a way to get even! Now, they can't even spell their own name without paying me.
Oh yeah, and CmdrTaco owes me $0.10 every time he says "CmdrTaco". And $0.50 every time the name "slashdot" appears.
OK since when can we patent how URLs and email addresses are assigned? That is the most bullshit non-sense I've ever seen to this day! Whoever is approving these patents needs to be taken out back of their home and shot!
This space is not for rent.
Is the company named SCO???
Darl would be proud!
Fight on, brave righteous patent warriors!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I think that the next patent that ought to be pursued in court is the symbolic representation of language as phonetically derived characters. 'Twas recently discovered to be the proerty of a company forming just next week, to assume such rights.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
hen I first saw this, I thought it was a hoax! But its mentioned a few times on google already.
A brief check on the authors shows that there isn't much on the web about these guys.
Troy Javaher is listed as being at ICANN 99 here, and the other guy here.
Dotmd is a strange site
Either way... When did the business model "I created a patent just so I could sue you" a socially acceptable business practice? I have no love for register.com, but I don't think that this is an acceptable thing to do to anyone.
Anybody can sue anyone about anything. It's only newsworthy if there's a slightest shred of the plaintiff winning.
I guess it's time for me to patent 'alphanumeric symbols combined to create grammatical constructs'.
I'd better hurry, before someone else grabs it up from under my nose.
Jeremy Baumgartner
--
.sig not found error
Is Darl McBride the CEO of this company, too?
Here's a link to the patent.
So, anyone have a website log or e-mail from before November 23,1999?
My blog
A Hyperlink patent?
D'oh!
What is claimed is:
1. A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of:
assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and
assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "name@subdomain.domain;"
wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said members of said group comprise members of a licensed profession.
Now... I'm going to try to remain calm here but HOW THE FUCK WAS THIS PATENTED?! Nothing is *invented* here, it's a method of organizing a system which ALREADY EXISTS (email and DNS). This just further shows the US Patent Office's stupidity.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"Means of allowing users to submit news tidbits with links to the actual news story"?
No, its the USPTO this time.
Only the money ladden will survive.
Didn't URLs get invented along with internet-like
systems?
If they did, subdomains is just the most logical
thing to you can add to URLs...
They HAVE to lose and the USPTO needs to start
doing a better time figuring out what patents
are BS and which are not...
Just a thought...
And countersue them for gross incompetence in making it ass-backwards from every other system - phone numbers are msd-lsd, ip addys are msB-lsB, folders, etc. Everything goes big-to-small except friggin' domains. Remember that old plan to bridge phone numbers into the DNS system? It would have been a hundred times easier if it was the other way around.
Unless all computers in the world switch to Roman numerals soon, India will become the world's wealthiest nation soon!
All your favorite sites in one place!
..and I feel fine.
Seriously, old fat women that go to Wal-Mart and fall on the wet floor have made their way to IT.
Just they are now heads of companies, heads that somehow rocketed up the company's ass so far that they cannot see reality.
*sigh*
STEEEEMPY, YOU EEEDIOT
Ten years ago I used to think inventors were really amazing role models.
Today I see inventors more as opportunists that think they can make a quick buck.
This is not an invention, and the past 100 patent articles on slashdot haven't been inventions either. These people and Amazon.com and every other crappy patent filer should get charged with fraud.
Am I the only one that thinks the patent system is out of control. I thought patents were designed to further scientific knowledge for the betterment of mankind or something like that. Now there are cases where research is being hindered because you're not allowed to use prior patented research. Patents helped a lot of scientists in the early days make a living but now it is just a way to strengthen megacorps. It disgusts me when a big company is sold not because of anything produced by it or because of it's quality of it's employees but because of the size of it's patent library. Changes need to be made.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
How silly.
Buckethead
Under this patent I can't set up a hosting site (lets say professions.com or something) and then give out subdomains with maching emails. For example I couldn't set up a website for a doctor at http://tomsmith.doctors.professions.com and give him the matching email address tomsmith@doctors.professions.com without having to worry about infringing on this patent.
I can't believe the US Patent and Trademark office let this kind of stuff through. Its just like the ActiveBuddy patent. Stuff like this makes me sick.
No.
You have shares don't you?
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
These guys are morons. They patent a technology and sue with groundless accusations. Usually when a company claims patent infringement, they try to find a small defenseless company in hope they can set precident. These guys? They go after NetSol and Register.com, two companies with enough legal firepower to make just about any company disappear.
This will be a fun one to watch.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I think a patent on patents that take universally accepted ideas and innovations is due, think of the revenue.
I'll sue.
I'll sue.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Also be a great example to the EU of what not to allow.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
HRMM just more money hungry people out there.. *YAWN* soo whats new?
AcmeShells.com The cheapest Eggdrop
"GNR manages the registry, and they're also potential infringers"
G'nR ?? I thought they broke up when Slash went solo.
Take me down
To the paradise city
Where the grass is green
And the girls are pretty
Just this week I patented an invention for a "systematic lettering system for user input" that should allow me to effectively sue every keyboard manufacturer on the planet!!!
But I don't really care about the money... I'm a blood thirsty Luddite looking to cure you all of your dependency on technology... getting rich will be just a happy side effect.
You may hate me now, but you'll be thanking me later.
This witll be the 2nd time in 6 months Network Solutions will be in a legal battle. Seems the Federal Trade Commission had an issue with them recently too. Check it out.
Sweet Jebus, is this article for real?!?! This makes Amazon's whiny militance about the 1-Click patent look like the wisdom of King Solomon.
What's next...lawsuits claiming infringement on the I.P. rights of the air we're breathing? Jupiter's own Ganymede is going to sue our Moon, claiming that it was first with the "orbiting satellite" patent? Why don't I slap my own brand-name sticker on the friggen _neutron_?
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
Oh, my God... how in the blue fucking hell did these two clowns get a patent for this shit????
I knew the USPTO was full of 'tards, but this just takes the fucking cake.. Only a freaking chimpanzee could think this patent deserved to be granted... no, wait, I take that back... a moderately intelligent chimp could see through this...
AAaaagggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These fools are gonna cause me to pull every last hair I have out of my head....
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
I ran a BBS in the late 1990's that was the first to provide internet e-mail at the time. I did it by piggybacking folks off the real internet provider at the time called EFN. People e-mailing my people had to send e-mail in a similiar fashion as I recall. I wish I could recall it exactly [its been a long long timt ago] but this is hardly new. I think it was daf.stargazer@efn.org became daf@stargazer locally. This is hardly something they need to fear!
Considering IE is the most installed browser, I'm surprised MS hasn't hard coded functionality in the browswer that would allow them to set up and sell non-official domains like .msn, .ms, etc., and have calls to these domains routed to their own DNS lookup servers. They literally have an unexploited cash cow on their hands here. What is barring them from doing this?
Can anyone say prior art. I mean they just got the patent less than a month ago.
...all and any procedures that determines the legal merits of patent infringment, either in or out of a legal court of law.
CHECK AND MATE SIR!
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is an American company right? Explains a lot. I understand Americans wanting to bear arms, freedom of speech, but nowhere do I see "Right to sue anyone, any time for any stupid reason"
Bush: Saddam Hussein must be stopped.
You: Hussein wouldn't have any affiliation with Microsoft would it???
Someone: Hitler was one of the most evil men alive.
You: Hmm. Hitler wouldn't have any affiliation with Microsoft would it???
So I guess what I'm saying here is that you are truly a nerd, my man. A bit of a kook in that you seem to think MS is out to get you, but nerdly none the less. I salute you.
I've just patent scroll bars.
You used one to get to this comment, didn't you?
PAY ME!
From the patent documentation:
This is the precice format for e-mail addresses in DNS zone file, for the SOA record. See RFC 1034, section 3.3. Date of prior art, 1987.
They should follow in the footsteps of SCO & send a cease & desist letter to everyone who uses third-level URLs... and naturally, they would need to provide a time-limited offer to license this 'intellectual property' for say, 5% of a company's networth, in exchange for (limited) immunity from the forthcoming lawsuit.
Even SCO would appreciate the effort when they received their cease & desist notice from Nizza...
Here's the original press release
That the institution of the state serves only to facilitate the bourgeisie's controll over the ability to controll the means of production and distribution leaving us out in the cold. Despite the fact that this is taking money away from one robber barron to another this only serves as a detriment to the working class because it continues to institutionalize money-grubbing. We need to do away with patents, the state, and capitalism.
http://www.anreabhloid.org
"LMAO" springs to mind.
/. scaremongering? Yes.
Anyway, wasn't this whole concept conceived by Tim Berners Lee, who invented the web and this syntax?
I mean, this has existed since before the patent regardless, so it won't mean shit in court.
More
I gained 5 mod points today anyway, do your worst, mods.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Selling or giving out sites under a person's name as a subdomain like...
http://tomsmith.doctors.professions.com
and give/sell him the matching email address...
tomsmith@doctors.professions.com
these two could sue me...
Just dumb!
No.
...and see for yourself how techno-jargon and a tremendous effort at obfuscation through over-complexity passed this patent through the filter. CowboyNeal's pithy sentence describes the near totality of the patent yet the patent itself spews reams of steps, trivia, and jargon to hide as well as possible the actual application of the patent. What a bunch of bullshit!
I think there ought to be penalties for the use of these nuisance patents. A judge then could not only strike down the patent's validity (which will obviously happen here), but could also impose a heavy fine to deter this kind of litigious crap from happening.
Hacking articles at http://www.geocities.com/chroo
This is precisely why US needs the "loser pays" style of laws ...
So what about us who run private TLD's for our Lan. They are going to sue us as well? Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
How long has the domain naming system been around (approx. 30 years)? Sometimes I wonder what minimal IQ it takes to work there.
MailBank (Now NetIdentity) has been doing exactly this since 1996. I don't see these cretins getting very far.
I hope here in Europe we do not import the US stupid Patent problems.
The only way round this is for US citizens to lobby US congresmen to change the patent laws to something sensible. Also publishizing things like this in the popular press is a good idea.
To the citizens of the US - Do you really want to live in a country where these IP pirates disrupt all? Where they in effect steal monies from businesses (who will pass the loss onto the customer)? You live in a democracy - do something about it!
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
With apologies if it's been posted before..
The Prior-Art-O-Matic
Filed: November 23, 1999 Hahaha, good luck in court idiots, they don't stand a chance.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Patent Description: Method for protecting inventions from being replicated by others, allowing the inventor a monopoly on their production. Yay, I just patented the patent. I ownerz the USPTO! Now stupid bastards can't patent obviously prior art ideas!
Oh please this is getting fucking stupid. Fair enough if you patent something very complex and impressive thats taken years of work, but really, most patents are just a joke - literally! if i was a patent clark i would actually just tell some of these people to fuck off and come back when they had something real, this patent is literally about some bloody dots, it pisses me off, its not even as though they even invented email, domain names or url formatting!! copyright law is a big joke.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ok, besides this being stupid, I distinctly remember being on the internet prior to 1999 and using URLs to access web sites and email addresses to send email.
According to that patent page the patent was filed on November 23, 1999. As the Spanish say: Que? Seriously, who in patent office granted this patent?
God damn it, I'm going to sleep now and hope I wake up somewhere else...
I suppose this has been brought up before, and everybody knows already except me, but with all the fowl-ups regarding the USPTO, has anybody ever considered suing THEM for the problems they have caused? Put some responsibility back into their actions, and make it harder for such a rediculous things that are happening these days.
/. too.
/. to have a whole icon devoted to the follies they create, then there should be SOME basis for starting an organized review and maybe a bit of a smackdown.
Or even if we don't go as far as suing them, work to get SOMETHING done about it. Compile a list of what WOULD have been frivilous lawsuits were it not for the USPTO's failure to operate properly, and get the ball rolling on making some changes. heck, even Google News has plenty of hits in less than a month on the issue. Should be plenty of fodder on
I figure, if there are enough failures in their system for
@Whee
The Patent was issued on November 23 1999.
Somehow I don't think its going to take a miracle to find prior art here.
I think the USPO could really do with being staffed by people with Common Sense(tm).
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Accoring to the USPTO website, there are three types of patents:
.. .... ........ sigh, etc
Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof;
Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and
Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plants.
I fail to see how an extra dot is a new idea, unless it is some wacky new ornament, or maybe the plan to asexually reproduce the dot .
This shit is getting out of hand. If it goes on long enough, we might start seeing a significant chunk of the economic benefit gained by having patents (it does exist, come on, guys!) getting swallowed up by the costs in time, money, and chilling effects on REAL entrepreneurs. At which point the US Supreme Court should be required to submit to whippings before reversing the god-awful decision that opened the door to business-method patents.
The problem with patenting business methods is that you cease to talk concretely about an actual implementation of a way of doing something. Take telephones: I could have invented cellular telephones a year after Bell was awarded his patent, and it wouldn't have infringed because it's a different way of doing the same thing. Now, though, I'm sure Bell would have patented "voice communications at a distance", or some such shit.
That's where the costs emerge--patents become a way of grabbing and extorting licenses for stuff that hasn't been invented yet, and which the patent holder couldn't have even invented.
Because that's what makes this possible, right? This isn't an invention--as another poster said, it's just an arrangement of existing systems. Now, some kind of actual implementation of a machine that would DO this might not be a business method patent, but I'd rather not get into a software patents discussion just now.
This kind of crap didn't happen as often before that goddamned decision--not as often, anyway. And I don't think that it's just the Internet that's making it happen.
The patent application was filed in 1999. Reading through the text of the patent, it describes something completely different: an email-to-fax/telephone/snail mail gateway and not the idea of having blah@foo.bar
My guess is this is someone trying to prove how idiotic the USPTO is.
Mmmm.. Donuts
These are just a couple of idiots looking for their 15 minutes of fame, and extra cash. This might be a new way to make millions overnight. Remember the DotCom-boom(R)*? Well this is the PatentBoom(R)*! Instead of Vaporware(R)*, you have Patentware(R)*, etc etc. My useless 2 cents.. *Vaporware,DotCom-boom, PatentBoom, Patentware (C)2004 By Me.
The first was in the 1890's when the Supreme Court gave corporations Eminent Domain which meant they had the rights of citizens but without the consequences.
The second was in the 1980's when they relaxed the patent process for software. Up till that time, software was considered to be nothing more than mathematical formulas which could not be patented.
How I long for the glory days!
Ah, yes, the good ol' SCO!
I guess SCO will be calling this upstart company in the morning with a lawsuit for infringing on their patent on suing over IP...
Filed: November 23, 1999
The patent abstract just screams "email addresses", which were (IIRC) widely popular & known about prior to 23 Nov. 1999.
This is why I hate the language used in patents & other legel documents - they are purposly obfuscated so that the patent is granted, when if it clearly stated "email addresses and URLs", it wouldn't get a second glance. And then we get more stupid litigation.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Mr Spock change phaser to nuke.. now!... too late
/nofat /nopatent /nostupidity /nohuman
come on!
format world:
aaargh!
Frankly, I think the clerk who let this be filed should honestly be fired. What ever happened to "obvious to a practicioner of the art?" I just wish there was some sort of law that this incompitent idiot could be prosecuted or civilly sued for.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Universities have been doing this since the 1980's (user@department.campus.edu). It's the trivial-case application for DNS. It's a stupid patent to grant, but at least there is a ton of prior art predating 1999.
This will likely just go away. Unfortunately, Network Solutions or Register.com will bleed attorney's fees for a while to challenge the patent. It is the best proof (so far) that USPTO are just too buried to make consistently good decisions.
To make a link:
I'm pretty sure freeshell.org has had username.freeshell.org urls for accounts of the form username@freeshell.org.
And I'm sure that there have to be other systems around that are set up like this.
+++ ATH0 +++
Watch your language, young ... whatever.
Neither conpany assigns domain names in either form covered by the patent. They register you with "subdomain.domain" and nothing else. The "name" part is added in the DNS setup for URLs; in the mail server for email addresses.
"
"name.subdomain.domain"
"name@subdomain.domain
You two freaking geniuses do realize that the patent is THE SECOND FUCKING LINK IN THE ARTICLE, RIGHT?
Noooo, of course not. That would invovle bothering to READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE, wouldn't it?!?
Why is this a good thing? Because this time, the fake-patenters got overzealous and attacked someone who actually has the legal resources to fight back. If they get smashed (and I hope they do) it will create a legal precedence that will make this practice much harder to do in the future.
It was a nice ride, but I guess it's time to shut it all down. Goodbye, DNS. Farewell, email. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to try all the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx permutations to bookmark my favorite sites again.
Ryan Fenton
Is this "Nizza Group" a subdevision of the SCO legal department? (SCNR!)
These @-Domains are nothing new.
1&1 sells these "domains" as subdomains.
Look here 500 @-domains
here 1000 @-domains or
here 2000 @-domains or
here 4000 @-domains or
here 15000 @-domains
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I am turning in my running shoes and quitting the Human Race! Bill
Email addresses were invented by Ray Tomlinson at BBN Technologies (late 60's? early 70's?). BBN's phone number can be looked up in Cambridge, Massachusetts; I am quite sure Ray will be willing to lay claim to have invented the modern email address, with its @ sign and dots, way back about the time I was being born. I'm quite sure he'll be slightly wrathful that someone is taking claim to his invention.
C//
This may be the one thing that Register.com and NetSol see eye-to-eye on...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
StarManta
In the SOA record used in DNS, the @ sign in the hostmaster's email address is replaced by a ".". So this correspondense between URL's and email addresses at the third and second level domains has been in use for a many years.
.US domain where you own city.state.us
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I patented reading /. posts and posting humorous "oh ya well I'm going to patent..." posts
I own you all.
Personally, I think that a judge should be allowed to fine a person up to and including the amount they sue for if a patent suit is found to be frivilous.
assigning an email address of fake@name.com to the guy with the website fake.name.com
:C!
Yea, but how do I scan it in with my CueCat?
And I wondered what DigitalConvergence was up to these days...
If you have a Cue Cat, save it. The patents and technology created by DigitalConvergence will again be available for business and consumer use.
The Cat will rise again!
they want their business plan back.
that you Darl?
Thees nizzas be fo' shizza
Why not patent lawsuits in general? That way you could sue anyone that sues for violating your patent.
One more example of why this country needs a loser pays legal system and capped awards. It's become so bad that if you have anything of value it's almost assured someone is going to come up with some way to sue you for it. Odds are they'll get something too. They may have no chance of winning but it's often cheaper just to settle with them. If the individual/company doesn't settle and they go to court... there's still some chance they'll some yahoo judge or jury to side with them and get a huge payout. So even if they sue 10 times and win once it still pays off. This nonsense is killing business, driving jobs overseas, raising insurance prices, and prices on everything in general. You make the loser pay that cuts some of that off. You put REASONABLE caps on awards you cut of some more. I really don't want to sudo finance idiots that do stupid things, sue, and end up getting rich because of it anymore. Of course there are times when something happens that's so outragous huge judgement are justified.. so in that case you have some panel of judges that examines these cases and comes up with something suitable. Of course this is probably wishful thinking to think this would ever happen. Trial lawyers are getting rich off this crap now and they have a bought a whole lot of political influence in the Democratic party and Republicans are too afraid to take them on (who wants to get in a fight with a lawyer.. not to mention ALL of them).
is the U.S. Government. Broad patents don't help innovation and stifle the progress of the arts and sciences.
funny that the USPTO is probably infringing on this too. haha, irony in action
Alcohol & calculus don't mix. Never drink & derive.
As soon as my patent on this thing you call "fire" is approved, I'm going after Bic and Zippo.
From the story: Weyer [the guy who owns the patent], who is a patent attorney, is handling this case himself.
It's very clear that these two pulled one over on the Patent Office (not hard to do these days) for the specific purpose of litigating. Sure, the Patent Office needs reform, but there should be laws against this type of lawyer scam also.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'm interested to see how this turns out. If it's successful then it should bode well for my own lawsuit against humanity for my patent on bipedal, air-breathing mammals equipped with a bio-CPU and soundwave-based communications apparatus.
After this I'm going to sue Cirque du Soleil's "Zumanity" for naming their show based on my "Sue Humanity" platform.
When I'm done with all this, should be just a couple months, I'm planning on suing my parents for creating my brother, an unintentional, but still inappropriate and unlicensed, I assure you, copy of myself. In my own EULA I specifically stipulate that I was only to be used in one location at a time, and that no copies were to be made without my express permission.
That should set everything straight. God bless attorneys.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
There's a word for this: Barratry (noun)
1 : the purchase or sale of office or preferment in church or state
2 : an unlawful act or fraudulent breach of duty on the part of a master of a ship or of the mariners to the injury of the owner of the ship or cargo
3 : the persistent incitement of litigation
Ruby on Rails Screencast
well as us peons sit on the sidelines watching patents get rammed thru by the guys over at the USTPO, i wonder how many of these suits is it going to take before these big companies ask for the system (that they wrongly profit from - amazon) to be changed. It does mean the gravy train ends. Now many annoyance suits are the bug boys gonna have to be slapped with before they lean on the govt to not allow people (including themselves) to abuse the system?
Really in the larger scheme very lawsuit against a big firm for a patent cranks up the patent annoyance factor and mebbe it will get someone to get off their ass eventually.
Back in the days, before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals was created by corporations and Reagan, Patent Examiners used to be able to reject patent claims.
Sometimes, when someone files claims as blindingly obvious as these, the Examiners would be permitted to reject the claims as an "obvious design choice". This was something appropriate to do when the choice made by the "inventor" did not add any new functionality to the thing sought to be patented, but was merely shuffling around design features that did nothing in and of themselves.
That is exactly what is happening here with these claims. The naming scheme here is no more functional than is a scheme of naming your own children.
Hey, here is a patent claim for ya that I just made up!
1. A method comprising: a set of parents naming their first child Thomas, their second child Zebedee, and their third child Squeamish.
Since a patent examiner looking at such a claim could not find a "motivation" in the "prior art" for one to name their children those precise names in that exact order, one could easily get a patent.
Time to name the Enemy: the Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit. They are the malfeasors who have tied the hands of the US Patent Examiners so that they can no longer apply the laws of obviousness, but instead have to jump through absurd hoops looking for "motivation" to do that which take zero mental effort, like.... naming URLs (or kids, for that matter).
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
...when someone obtains a ridiculous patent, gets some goofy Federal judge (and there are plenty of those) to uphold it in such a way to completely devastate an industry or even adversly affect the whole American economy.
;-)
It's like the Iraq WMD situation... except this time they're waiting for someone to drop the Big One before doing something about it.
Of course if I'm the one with the patent, then everything will be OK.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I I NIHIL I I NIHIL NIHIL I I NIHIL
;)
DEFECTVS SEGMENTATIONIS
Svre, i can manage that. Lvcky that I, as one, live in Italy
Once we've settled the prior art dispvte vvith the Greeks (damn their alphas and betas, by Jove, vve'll have to invade them again), ovr nation shall rise again!
All your ascii are belong to vs.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Not only are they fighting themselves to rid themselves of traditional weapons of mass destruction, they are also working towards eliminating IP weapons of mass destruction.
*sigh* If only it were true... Save me a lot of time and trouble.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
URL? Universal Republic of Love?
I belive the accronym you were looking for is URI.
Can you sue the Patent Office for not dereliction of duty? (or has that been patented)
My daughter claims to have patented U, R, A, J, A, C, K, A, S, S, in both upper and lower case. Her lawyers will be contacting these idiots' lawyers ( Javaher & Weye) in the morning.
Bang paths. Still used in usenet headers. You could get royalties for every usenet post.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
anyone else notice that the article references Nuclear Solutions, Inc.'s stock price at the bottom?
what do they have to do with this?
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
I love this country!
Is prior art even taken into consideration anymore?
I mean, seriously.. WTF PTO?
here's mine "A system for organic intake of oxygenated gas, processesing, and expulsion of carbon dioxide using the regulated expansion and contraction of internal, flexible chambered compartments." pay up, suckers!
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
No, they are very smart. They defiantly are dishonest shysters, but they are a couple of very smart lawyers who have figured out how to dishonestly squeeze money out of a corrupt and flawed system.
Morons? Not at all.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I don't think a hostname is a URL.
Yes! This is perfect! Thank you!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
URLs start with the "http://" prefix, or probably more correctly "|protocol|://" prefix.
They have a domain name there, that is all, not a URL.
If they get the terminology wrong in a patent, does that mean it is invalid, because the "inventor" doesn't understand the topic well enough to be explicitly correct ? I would have thought patents have to be explicitly correct, as the government is granting the patent holder a monopoly, and therefore, the patent must be very clear and correct.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
In A.D. 2101
....
War was beginning.
CAPTAIN: What happen ?
MECHANIC: Somebody set us up the bomb.
OPERATOR: We get signal.
CAPTAIN: What !
OPERATOR: Main screen turn on.
CAPTAIN: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
CATS: YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION.
CAPTAIN: WHAT YOU SAY !!
CATS: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME.
CATS: HA HA HA HA
OPERATOR: Captain !!
CAPTAIN: Take off every 'ZIG'!!
CAPTAIN: You know what you doing.
CAPTAIN: Move 'ZIG'.
CAPTAIN: FOR GREAT JUSTICE.
Give them a spanking and send them to bed without dinner!
I hereby claim prior ar as I have the domain
myName.de
with subdomains
prename.myname.de
for most of my families members and they have email addresses like
prename@myname.de
as well. Done it like this for years.
Filing - and granting - a patent for such stuff is but a joke.
By the way, how long will it take until someone starts patenting jokes? Like a tv producer patenting every single pointe they produce?
guy1: You know the one about the lawyer and the hangman?
guy2: Yeah, wait, US pat. 1234567891234g
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Unfortunately, this is a frightfully possible scenario.
I seriously believe that, within the next few years, the American economy - IT in particular - is going to begin to suffer tremendously because of patent and other IP laws in this country as well as unchecked litigation.
It's getting to the point where "lock out" is a very real possibility for ANYTHING new being introduced. When that happens, the rest of the world is going to seriously trounce us while we stifle under thousands of lawsuits over stupid patents and overbroad IP laws that serve only to protect corporation's bottom line. Not to mention the absolutely ridiculous judgements that are coming from these cases - for example, Eolas vs. MS at $521M.
And with cross licensing of patent portfolios, the rise of companies whose business plans read "buy patents and sue everything that moves" and armies of lawyers looking for a buck, we're seriously screwed. You can forget the little guy starting a new tech company with a potential new product. As soon as he hits someone's radar, he'll get squashed like a bug.
You know... it's only recently that I've taken up a "future of doom" attitude, but all of this stuff is really scary. We don't have rights anymore - corporations (and Ashcroft) have been steadily stripping the American people of their rights and freedoms, which is just sad. So much of what this country used to stand for has been forgotten in the name of the bottom line and "homeland security". Sure, we still have it good as far as freedom goes, but I really think that, in my lifetime (I'm 30), the U.S. will be relegated to second class citizen while the EU, China and India destroy us. And we're bringing it all on outselves with this short sighted crap.
Sorry... soapbox.
Surely email addresses in the form "user@host.domain.tld" have been around since the arrival of DNS? That must be a whole lot of prior art.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I have a visual basic application I wrote a long time ago that did this very thing - replaced the @ with a . in an e-mail address. Why? Because I for some strange reason was seperating records with the @ sign - so I replaced it with a . - assuming that the username wouldn't have a . in it. That visual basic procedure is almost a reference implementation of this...
He's got a wonderful first novel starring, suprise, a patent attorney. It's a murder mystery!
M.I.T can be Murder
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
shoot me. just shoot me. please. I have lost all hope in men.
can't...go...on...living...
what's next, petented hyperlinks?
If you want career advice, become a lawyer. Hey, as we are seeing, there is, and will be, a big demand for this skill set. We all may hate their guts, but the legal field is not in the doldrums like the tech industry.
In fact, I feel like sueing someone. Yeah, got the urge to get a lawyer and make someone elses life miserable. Get me a good shyster and go after someone or business. Maybe settle outta court for $$$.
New business model:
1. Hire lawyer
2. Sue the be-jezuz outta some smuck - settle
out of court
3. Profit!
1) PROFIT!!!!!!!
This is just getting patently insane.
*distant sound of a rimshot*
Thank you, thank you. *bows*
It's time for the USPO to get some cajones and turn some people down. I can't afford to go to court every time I do some obvious thing and find out somebody patended it.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
It is soooo time to terminate these ridiculous patents.
There needs to be a better screening process when a patent application is made, or more to the point if the patent is exercised, or demonstration made that it will be exercised in a VERY short time, it should be anulled and forever be public domain.
Hey Look - I know I am an Anonymous Coward and whatnot, but you have to mod this up so people can see if this really checks out as Prior Art.
http://www.uklinux.net
This ISP has been doing this whole "giving subdomain and email address" since I have been using it (2000) and it may have been before this patent was applied for.
Amongst other goodies, this Linux based ISP offers its customers:
Doesn't this sound like exactly the same system?
Now the site News section says:
December 31st, 1999
uklinux.net is officially launched.
Which is a month or so past the date the Patent was filed for - but maybe uklinux.net could prove they had the system in place (ie. while developing etc.) before this time.
The examiners should have rejected the application the minute they saw where it was being filed from.
Yep. Jail time and fines. The only way to stop stupidity like this.
Of course, they'd also have to chuck away whoever GRANTED the patent in the first place.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The first was the decision to remove the tenth amendment to the Constitution by abusing the interstate commerce clause.
That completely changed the legal system in the US, and removed the rights of citizens of a state to decide best how to govern their own state.
The Founding Fathers would puke if they were alive now.
perhapas its not just something wrong with these idiots everywhere, but something inherently wrong with the system which promotes such acts of idiocy
Egad! Can you belive this tripe? I feel dirty for even having felt the need to respond at all. That being said, here is some prior art... This is by no means an exhaustive list -- just an example of what good record keepers we the community can be:
RFC#2396: Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, August 1998
RFC# 1738: Uniform Resource Locators (URL), December 1994
RFC# 1034: Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities, November 1987
Take that!
More Caffeine. NOW
Well, I was gonna save the starting up of my doomsday cult for if bush wins again, which would destory any thought of hope for the human race, but I think that this has done it.
(Score:0, Interesting)
Took a while to troll through the archives, but I believe this comic sums up the issue ...
PvP Online ... Laugh, it's funny
Robert Anton Wilson
There is a difference between an invention and a convention.
illegitimii non ingravare
Any person (examiner) who approves a patent this bad should be forced to stand unprotected in the (newly established) "stoning court" outside the USPTO should their patent failt the slash-dot "that's really stupid" test.
The only thing(s) the patent examiner may use as a shield are the materials he gathered together that he can demonstrate are in support the patent, or the bodies of the person or persons who submitted the patent in the first place. The attendence of those persons is mandatory.
The galery has one half of one hour to act as they see fit... stones varing in size from golf-ball to basketball will be amply provided by the FTC.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I think there's obvious prior art here.
Does British Telecom ring any bells?
Should there be a Law?
reading this patent... this is the clearest example i've ever seen of patent fraud.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Does anyone actually know who the patent examiner is in real life ?
Truthfully I love this Patent: it provides excellent evidence on how to not run a Patent system.
And I bet the US middle-classes are still wondering why they are losing jobs to Indian sub-continent while they think that a patent on where to stick a '.' in a URL is really important ! I can see it now: US economy saved by @ period.
OMFG WTF LOL BBQ
(the above was an excerpt from this newly-formed company's president's thought process)
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
So listen Mr Frank Weyer, if you go after anyone for having a subdomain with matching email address, I'll sue you for using . in your URL's without my permission.
And don't try to set a court date using a calendar on your computer because a friend of mine holds patent for displaying a month calendar on a computer system by dividing it into rows of 7 days each.
i think this says it all... he's someone who profits from the law, in this case it's loopholes and misuse...
OK...are we going to need to pay licensing fees on URLS now? Are they going to come after me and threaten to sue?
I'll go get a lawyer
I completely fail to see how one can patent the use of domain names in this fashion. That strikes me like patenting the concept that a "record" corresponds to a physical object, citing an employee table as an example.
Obviously this patent was never examined by anyone with enough neurons to spark a thought.
Maybe it's time companies affected by these nonsense "patents" start suing the patent office to recover costs and damages for defending against such garbage.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This patent was filed in 1999, and granted in 2003. DNS domains had been in use for, what, 10 years or so? There's no way this lawsuit will succeed.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How can this be? Everyone knows Al Gore invented the Internet. I didn't see his name mentioned in the patent.
Does he know he's been ripped off, again?
but wtf is a registrar?
I think AOL did it and I knew a hosting company (that since went out of business) that had done it prior to '00. It's sad that people are filing patents with the only intent to sue with them. The one where Microsoft loses in-browser application support for example. Was this person ever planning on introducing this technology on their own? I doubt it. I hate these people.
Quotes delayed 20+ minutes
Register.com Inc RCOM 5.46 -0.04(-0.73%)
Nuclear Solutions Inc NSOL 0.06 0.00(0.00%)
I think they messed up.
And here I thought SCO would be the only contender for "Stupidest Lawsuit of All Time". Good thing I didn't bet any money on that.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I have prior art on the "First Name.Middle Name.Last Name" scheme. If you find that your name matches or closely resembles this pattern, my lawyers will be contacting you shortly.
The fact that the "group of (professionals|people)" defined by the RFC are persons interested in or responsible for controling a section of the global DNS system. That will give you 100% coverage.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I'm pretty sure I remember some people running their own web servers as well, if that's their game.
you are that idiotic.
bucket fucking head
The US patent office gets PAID if they accept a patent. Issue lots of patents, and the Federal government is $1,000 closer to being self-sufficent.
Ya I know the US Patent Office isn't exactly the kind of office that NEEDS to be self-sufficent... but think of it this way: if a technology patent officer is laid off, do you think he or she will ever find ANYONE to hire them? Public schools notwithstanding of course...
I dunno... suing Verisign for anything is pretty gutsy, and I do particularly dislike them, but this lawsuit is pretty dumb.
were doing this when I got my first commercial internet connection (circa 1994) and AFAIK are still doing it.
--
E_NOSIG
Could we get a USPTO representative or (probably more realistically) a well-known patent lawyer for a Slashdot Interview? The USPTO patent database is full of stupid and uninventive "inventions" with more stupid ones granted all the time. Specifically, I'd like to know more about what your average geek can really do about this. I'd imagine writing to congressmen won't make a huge impact for this issue. Maybe we need some sort of nerd lobbying organization. Well, you know what I mean. I know we've had interviews in which related patent questions were answered, but I'd like to see a forum just for this problem. It's ridiculous things like this that make me think that if corporations won't respect the ideas this IP system was created for, why do we have to continue to respect their IP? That's kneejerk, and I think IP has its place, but not like how it's currently abused.
Anyone know why Goatse.cx went down? Does someone have a patent on enlargened anuses?
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
..so then how exactly did this get through?
Eight years ago my ISP gave users name.tiac.net and user@tiac.net.
I don't get it... the patent applies to not just name@subdomain.domain, that's just the first half, the second half is that is relates to finding them based on profession... doesn't it have to match both?
I nearly have prior art, as the whole thing is so stinking "common sense":
jason.artoo.net which I had jason@artoo.net for the email and that's how all of our users' webspace and emails were set up (see my old email at the bottom of our access request page to confirm the email portion), from 2000.
Even more obvious was on my surname page which clearly states we'll give any Roysdon their own email forwarding and web-redirection (or hosting for that matter)... but again, alas, it's from 2001.
All your machinery are belong to me!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
This patent never should have issued, and it won't hold up in court.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I just wish my country (Denmark) had a patent-law that could help business' like the american patent-law.
It's clear to me that this patent helps "stimulate the inventive genius" and makes it possible for companies to do do research that would never be done without the patent-law, thus helping the community at large.
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
I've been violating this patent for over ten years.
...
.. Wait. They don't assign the {machine named after you} portion...
.MD (I think that was the first country to sellout) already did this before the filing date. Well. OHMYGAWD they don't have a leg to stand on.
Hmmm... wait for it
Since over 6 years before the FILED the despicable application.
And since NSI doesn't assign the email addresses they can't hope to get them except on the claims of {machine named after you}.domain.tld
It will IMHO be just days before this is dropped unless the federal circuit that gets it is totally clueless. This is _the_ standard way of naming things. The only possible violation, and that is very slight, is if the claim 2 linking the convention to a profession is brought into play, but since the tld
Sheesh...
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Fortunately, BIND treats name.subdomain.domain as an email address for name@subdomain.domain, and I'd be really really surprised to see these Bozos get away with claiming that they were doing this prior to BIND's existence, since it's the canonical DNS server implementation since about a decade before their alleged invention. Also, the IAHC IETF Ad-Hoc Committee, which was trying to do a set of new TLDs (unsuccessful politically) before ICANN was formed to pretend to address the same problem, had proposed a ".nom" gTLD which is substantially similar to ".name" - Their report was in February 1997, and it had been discussed widely in the mailing lists that many of the skilled practitioners hung out in for a while before that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I wonder if the public awareness could be raised to the point where the cost to the economy caused by these abuses could make it into some campaign discussions. It would be one heck of a soap box to stand on - how government processes are being abused by greedy corporate (and private) businessmen who hide the truth like an Enron or Worldcom and how this is once again causing the nation's economy undo harm while the government watchdogs are not being diligent. It would give all these politic heads another reformation of government and business topic that they could make huge promises about without ever moving towards a solution. And it is a whole lot safer to double the USPTO's budet to handle this than it is to double the welfare system. ;-)
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
But ".name" wasn't the first TLD to use first.last.name as a format - the IETF Ad-Hoc Committee (IAHC) proposed an approximately-identical ".nom" in their February 1997 report. (THe IAHC were the legitimate organization that failed politically and was followed by the highly dubious ICANN gang.) So ~2.5 years before the patent filing, there was a public report about the general topic, and it had been discussed by a lot of the skilled practioners before that.
Furthermore, there was lots of published material about using email or other syntaxes for contacting offline people, such as email-to-fax gateways and lots of Unified Messaging Hype from Bell Labs, Bellcore, AT&T, Lucent, etc., which is the fundamental technical thing that they seem to be claiming.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I noticed in perusing this junk patent that the PTO has no means by which citizens can criticize or challenge the validity of a patent they issue. I hereby propose to patent such a system, then lobby the gummint to make the PTO license my patent... tee hee....
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
If this sort of thing had happened 150 years ago, shots would have been fired. The fact that our system allows and even encourages this sort of utter stupidity is a very bad sign. What can and can't be done legally are getting farther and farther from making sense. I hope some inspired leadership appears soon (not bloody likely) to push for radical changes in the way the system works. Otherwise I fear some really ugly, drastic and unpredictable action on the part of some (understandably) frustrated group, which will probably only make things worse.
future of doom
Naw. Every generation and place has its crises, real or imagined. Humanity and civilization are remarkably resiliant. There was going to be the death of the world by heat death of the Sun. There was going to be a nuclear World War III during JFK's time that was going to wipe out civilization. There was the Black Plague, the fall of European royalty, the Great Depression, the US Civil War, World War I and II, and the Mongols invading China. There was the Spanish Inquisition. There was slavery. There were Pompeii and Krakatoa, the Big Earthquake that was going to split California off into the sea, and the melting of the ice caps. We had the mass immigration of Irish and Chinese laborers to the United States. We kept puttering along, even if things sucked for a while. A lot of folks worried that there was going to be an end to things. But, as long as there are lots of stubborn, self-interested, emotional, flawed, and oh-so-human hairless apes running around busily patching anything that upsets them too much, I suspect things are going to be more or less okay. Really, the best thing to do is to sit back and enjoy the wild and crazy stage we call life.
May we never see th
Well, in 1996 I had an account with Demon Internet I had the domain maidast.demon.co.uk where my account name was maidast. In 1998 they started giving free webspace for www.maidast.demon.co.uk as well.
Surely this is prior art?
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
This patent is one of the clearest and more straightforward that I've ever read.
To read a patent, do the following:
1) If you already know what the patent is, skip the abstract. The abstract can be useful, but is also a nice place to include bullshit. It also has no legal significance.
2) Read the claims. The claims are where the meat -- the legally significant portion of the patent -- is. If anyone infringes on even one of these claims, they are infringing on the patent.
3) Skip the remaining description. This is nothing but "helpful" information. That means a place to include technobabble, jargon, random stuff that might appeal to people licensing the patent, half-baked ideas, and random diagrams. In this case, you're apparently trying to read a textual representation of some sort of diagram with 1000 steps, which is a waste of time.
This patent has only two claims, and for legalese, both are short and to the point.
The main difficulty in reading claims comes when there are many claims (perhaps 30 or so) and most of them refer back to a number of other claims.
Disclaimer -- IANAL.
May we never see th
One of the "inventors" (term used VERY loosely) - Frank M. Weyer - is also an attorney specializing in intellectual property litigation. As if it weren't already pretty damn obvious the patent was never intended to be used for anything other than suing someone...
At least one specific recommendation by a governing body for using hostmaster.example.com. as a DNS label to represent "hostmaster@example.com" can be found here, published well before this patent was filed.
This can also be seen in RFC 1912 (section 2.2), published in 1996.
These muppets have patented something published in one of the very standards they should be familiar with.
- J
But that's ok - the patent is on ways to use (syntactically incorrect) URLs that are almost identical to to email addresses, not on using character strings that happen to resemble domain names, and that's not what the .name registrars are doing - they's using domain names correctly :-)
So while there are a wide range of reasons this patent should have been rejected, and should now be thrown out on its ear, that's a separate problem issue from the lawsuit, which (if the newspaper articles are correct, which they never are about technical issues) is frivolously and falsely claiming that the respondants are infringing the plaintiff's patent. NO surprise that if they'd write a patent that was that blatantly incorrect, they'd also be bad at lawsuits, but the press reports don't give the text of the lawsuit, they just give the patent number which has the text of the patent.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
(Now for the cynical "Malice or Incompetence" discussion :-) So why did they write this egregiously overblown incompetent abuse of the patent process? Was it just a "throw enough things together to hope they'll get through, since the Patent Office was allowing anybody to patent just about anything as a business method"? Did they just get lucky about noticing .NAME's syntax?
Or (extra-cynical mode) did they notice that the syntactic trick was potentially useful, and write a bogus patentable-looking process around it to get it through so they could do overly-broad lawsuits? I suspect regular greed and malice are enough of an explanation, since they don't appear to be competent enough to have applied extra-special malice :-)
Oh, yeah, the mere fact that BIND has some similar syntax (with correct semantics) a decade earlier, which anyone vaguely skilled in the trade would know, suggests they weren't paying much attention to prior art (and the patent examiner should of course also be fired...) The fact that the "IETF Ad-Hoc Committee" (IAHC), (who were the IETF's attempt at dealing with the new-TLDs question before ICANN formed itself) had proposed a ".nom" gTLD that was largely similar to ICANN's later ".name" should also have been obvious prior art - the IAHC's report was in February 1997, about 2.5 years before the patent filing. So even if ".name" uses similar syntax, there's prior art for *that*, plus the ",name" people are doing domain names, which are radically different from URLs, which the plaintiffs should also know.
I can't say that the lawsuit is facially invalid, because IANAL, especially not a patent lawyer, and the patent office did let this turkey through along with a herd of other turkeys that have succeeded at lawsuits, but boy is this a vessel of fertilizer that's extremely strong.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The point is that the idea behind the patent system is that someone can set up a business selling the practical implementation of an invention. The idea is not giving patent lawyers the ability to extort money from existing companies. IMHO, a patent should be declared null and void if the patent holder does not intend to set up a business selling his invention. Of course, I know of no lawyers that attempt to uphold the intention of the law.
...erudite and laden with deep analysis. But after reading this all I can muster is a heavy "what the fuck?!?!?!!?" It goes beyond stupid straight into gonzo.
The complete ridiculousness of the patent notwithstanding, at least iki.fi has long offered, along with their mail forward service, a subdomain service in this format. That is, a user foo has an "Iki address" foo@iki.fi.invalid (invalid added to discourage spam and indicate that the address is fictional) and has the option to get the subdomain foo.iki.fi.invalid. The subdomains of this format are reserved for the users whether they currently want them or not.
While Iki has been operating since 1995, the Iki domains are a bit newer. Still, the earliest reference I can find for this domain service is dated February 2nd 1998. This clearly predates the patent filing date of November 23th, 1999.
So there.
It's when it was applied for that matters, not the fact that it was granted only a few weeks ago. If they applied in, say, 1946, then it could have been valid.
(checks doc.) Filed November 23,1999.
Ok, so all Network Solutions need to do is check whether or not Freeserve (or an American version of them) were issuing accounts with URL www.account.freeserve.co.uk and email address account@freeserve.co.uk prior to 23/11/1999. I'm pretty sure I've had my current account of that form since before then, so defeating this patent should be a piece of cake.
I have been reading with interest the latest (as in the last year or so) patents that you have been granting. I am suprised at your responses and view many having prior art.
I believe that you have a serious problem with your "prior-art" database. I think you should get onto your DBA to sort out why when I enter "URL" in the search field it returns "0 results found."
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I noticed that the patent was first filed in November 1999. During July 1999, I came across a company called Internode (http://www.internode.on.net) that was selling subdomains for the on.net domain. I remember Peter Gabriel was using realworld.on.net for one his websites. I've no idea how much earlier these guys had been doing this for.
Surely this is prior art!?!
Should that be 12 years?
My old ISP Smart.net used to give each user the third-level domain for their userid back in 1994!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The fork knife and spoon icon is appropriate for this one! Lol x 2
Mike
-- $G
I propose an IPR-based world domination plan:
Oh wait! the USA started implementing this plan already a decade ago...
Here is one example of what actually does happen when this plan is in action: When someone tries to apply for a real, innovative, detailed patent in another country, say EU for example, it will be rejected by the EU patent office because of an existing over-broad US "patent" which "covers everything". Perhaps patents from overly lax countries should be considered less valid by default?
P.S. Here's my prior art contribution for this bogus patent: IKI.FI, a non-profit society, has been doing since 1995 what they claim to have invented in 1999. I wrote a page about this at http://www.iki.fi/iki/faq/boguspatent6671714.html so it's easy to find when googling with the patent number.
Lawyers are a good thing. Yes, you read that right.
The simple fact is that the law is necessarily a complicated thing at times. It has a complicated job to do. Thus, while you or I should certainly be able to understand it if we choose to investigate, it's helpful to have specialists who know the basics off the top of their heads, and perhaps more importantly, who are familiar with the background in their field (relevant case law, key decisions, known or potential loop-holes, etc.) and have real world experience in how their field works.
This is no different to any other professional field. If you're a technical guy running a large company and you're smart, you'll have accountants to do your finances for you, because accountants know basic finance off the top of their heads, and will be familiar with local company financial regulations and such. You don't try to sell everything yourself, you get salesmen and marketing people to handle that side of the business, because they'll know the basics of sales and marketing and they'll have a good knowledge of your business area, who you most likely prospects are, how to close a beneficial deal, and so on.
Now, you can view these people as necessary evils, or even scum-sucking bottom-feeders, if you like. And of course, there are always bad apples in the bunch who are motivated by nothing but personal advancement and have... dubious... ethics. But most lawyers actually aren't like that, and as the old cliche says, behind every sleazy lawyer, there's a sleazy client.
IANAL, BTW; nor am I married to one, working for one, or otherwise biased in their favour.
Well, you could always elect Hollywood instead...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, but they told me to calm down when I got my ballot. It turns out that attitude has nothing to do with how your vote is counted.
this is pretty standard practice among big corporations. it works like this :
* go to another country, say, India or Burma
* take some folk remedy, or an agri product or seed they have been using for ages - like turmeric, or rice.
* patent it in US, whose patent office wil grant the claim the company discovered it, because according to them the other country is nto a part of the universe.
* wait for the other country to join some WTO treaty which forces them to honor this patent from US.
*start demanding royalties for every villager using turmeric as a medicine or cooking rice - in eality from every seller of rice in that country.
in short, these companies have been taking advantage of the fact that patent office employment in US requires only highschool diploma or something similar for yeaaars. only now it becomes news.
Couldn't resist... Have you ever heard the one about the lab rat and the lawyer having sex? Of course you haven't... There are some things even a lab rat won't do.
Look, just tell them that we need to have, pronto, a method of challenging and revoking (auditing) patents. Then tell them why...give them examples (like this one). Mention things like "prior art". Congress is clueless, but we CAN clue them in...we just need lots of people to start yammering at them, then they'll get the message.
I've had this from my isp since 1996. I get myuser.myisp.co.uk, and myuser@myisp.co.uk. This is in the UK though.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
This sounds about like several years ago when some newly formed outfit got a patent on the US Broadcast EAS methods. Several months after the newer methods became the law of the land via an FCC edict, we all got letters informing us we were in violation of their patents and would we please remit a check for a 4 digit amount for each years use as royalties.
Since there was plenty of prior art, some of it 3 decades old, we ignored it. I guess they hassled the makers too, and eventually the patent was rescinded. I do not know who paid the attornies that worked on it, just that someone did, possibly the Harris Corp, who sold the industry the majority of the gear we needed to comply...
Our attitude as broadcasters was that we were damned if we were going to pay blackmail for conforming to a governing body edict.
I say we tell them politely to go get screwed, possibly by the camel that rode in on them.
My own "prior art" extends back to the 1991-2 area. I went online, useing that form of address shortly after I got my first amiga. MPL, in Buchannon WV was my first isp.
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap,
ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
I have patented the following sentence structures:
Noun verb.
and
Pronoun verb.
I have applied for additional patents on what I call 'adjectives' and 'adverbs', which can be used in my patented sentence structure.
You'll all be receiving cease and desist letters from my lawyers.
Thanks.
No. I am your son.
Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!
http://mediagoblin.org/
Sorry, I'm sure I hold current patents on the disassembly and reassembly of collections of subatomic particles, as instantiated in complex systems of atoms and molecules, for the purposes of archival, transmission, or deletion.
Oh, and my secretary tells me I have a patent pending on the use of the legal system to obtain monetary redress and compensation for percieved infringement of thoughts and ideas. So whatever you were going to reply, please remit payment first!
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I patented the naming convention Firstname Middlename Lastname, so i am going to sue anyone who has named their child in this fashion.
Not much choice or point in it since it is all contolled by electoral colleges. Hmmmm....does the average citizen actually have a say!?
I do recall watching the last 'electoral', it was more like 'hot-potato', or perhaps that should be spelled "potatoe"!?
Well, I think our old company Easy.To has some prior art for them. Started in 1997, we gave free access to our domains, easy.to, messages.to, i.am, etc. This gave the users access to a forwarding URL and forwarding email account in the form of
http://www.username.i.am or http://i.am/username
and
username@i.am
Does that qualify as prior art?
Regards,
Jib
I was about to write a huge rant and rage about how pissed off I am that people would have the audacity to patent something like this. I bet this is a ploy by microsoft to get rid of domain names and force the world to downgrade to WINS. Hurry up and register your WINS name with microsoft now!
Ah, the joys and delights of intellectual property law.
It's a wonder that SCO haven't come up with this one. It wouldn't surprise me if they were behind it.
Someone can't own example.com because it is reserved: See RFC 2606 ( http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2606.html ) section 3 and I quote.... "3. Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the following second level domain names reserved which can be used as examples. example.com example.net example.org" Regards, TSK
Perhaps the standards should be changed so the USPTO and the examiners are judged by the ratio of patents granted to patents later overturned. Or maybe the USPTO could be required to pay a portion of the expenses incurred to successfully challenge a bogus patent.
This would close the feedback loop and provide a means to balance the desire to protect IP with the need to prevent patent abuse.
How about we all get "infringing" website/email addresses and notify them of our "infringment," daring them to sue us. This way, if they sue one of us, we can stomp them in court. If, on the other hadn, they don't sue us, they'd lose their right to enforce the patent in the future. Well, how about it?
That's it, I'm patenting the process of patenting something to sue somebody, and I'll be sueing whoever tryies to break that.
They were smart enough to auction off the rights to their TLD for a handsome sum.
This kind of thing is getting way out of hand.
I can see the advertisements for Law firms now....
Litigation: Your business model for the New Millenium!
as in a political region ruled by a cunt.
This kind of bullshit is typical American crap. Intellectual property and patents on ideas are unknown in other parts of the world.
At the risk of being nationalist, I think that's actually a peculiarly American attitude, encouraged by your absurdly over-litigious society. Unfortunately, the US is a big influence, and what started there with a few silly court rulings and some dodgy public officials and new laws is spreading.
In the UK, for example, we've switched from a system that provided legal aid to accident victims wanting to take action against someone who was responsible to a system of "no-win, no-fee" representation. That sounds all fine and dandy, but the immediate result is zillions of lawyers -- who were previously legally restricted in their advertising -- going ambulance chasing. Guess what? Now we have loads of frivolous lawsuits.
Just the other day, a guy who was employed as a chef took action against his employer after he cut himself with a knife while preparing food, alleging that he hadn't been shown how to cut the food with that knife safely. THE GUY WAS A CHEF, FFS! If he wasn't competent to do the job, he shouldn't have taken it. Now, what was (from the descriptions I saw) a minor cut to his finger has allegedly jeopardised his whole career. What a shame he didn't accidentally cut off his head with a meat cleaver instead.
And so it goes on. What used to be office politics is now sexual discrimination, racism, ageism, "not what you know it's who you know" and worse. Some of this is legitimate, of course, and it's absolutely right that people's personal prejudice shouldn't impair the careers of women, people from different religious backgrounds, etc. The problem is that now everything negative that happens to a woman, or a black man, or a man over 50, seems to be damned as discrimination, even if there's a clear-cut case for employing the chosen 35-year-old white man instead.
I, for one, do not welcome our new highly-litigious compensation-seeking overlords. Fortunately, the senior members of our legal profession in this country seem to be at least somewhat more down-to-earth than those in the US, and most of the frivolous lawsuits have been dismissed in fairly short order. For now...
(Interestingly, I've just seen this BBC News article, published today, with comments from a senior Law Lord. Just 8 people responsible for 178 claims since 2000? Man, they must be the most unlucky people on the planet! Or...)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Find out who let this pass and GET THE BASTARD FIRED!
This will wake up those idiots at the patent office!
They have a job requirement to look for prior art and obvious things, but they are lazy and aren't doing their job and so deserve to be FIRED!
Get the idiot fired!
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