Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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....
Here's a link to the patent.
So, anyone have a website log or e-mail from before November 23,1999?
My blog
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
The patent's more specific than that... their patent is a TLD operator selling people not true domains, but instead 3rd level web domains paired with matching 2nd level e-mail services. It's a specific product that they developed for .md that seems to have been duplicated by .name... the good news is that this only effects those who hold .name addresses, .com, .net, .org, .us, etc. can still go to sleep tonight...
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.
MailBank (Now NetIdentity) has been doing exactly this since 1996. I don't see these cretins getting very far.
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.
The thing is that ISPs have been selling these kind of things to customers for over 10 years now, so prior art is going to be hard to determine.
The first ISP I worked for offered customers:
www.customer.ccnet.com
and customer@ccnet.com
from about 1995 or so.
It's a silly patent.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
might there be some prior art?
when setting up a zone file with bind you specify an email address of the admin in charge of the domain in the SOA record.
an email address of joeuser@somedomain.com would be written as joeuser.somedomain.com. admittedly its not a direct prior art, but i can definately see someone making a jump from this to what the patent is about.
just my 2 cents
Ophidian
Maybe Iraq could get a leg up on reconstruction by contesting that claim in an X-TREME CRADLE-OF-CIVILAZATION *SMACKDOWN*.
I'm sure some university way back used the same naming convention.
This is beyond belief. I don't know to be upset with these idiots that filed the suite or the US patent office which uses the same naming convention (most government agencies do). I've heard they have Ph. D. working at the patent office but come on...who signs off on their Ph. Ds?
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
This joke is in every single thread with the patent icon.
I used to have a site in 1997 at matman.megaepic.com. My email address was matman@megaepic.com. Woooo.
Indeed. In the article they're described as "Javaher and Weyer were part of the original group that launched the .md domain in the United States in 1998. With the .md domain, physicians could register URLs ending in .md, such as www.janesmith.md."
No mention that ".md" is just another of those small countries (Moldova in this case) who've signed away rights to some scumbags who think that they can pretend the letters stand for something else. Similar ones: .la (Laos, pretending to be Los Angeles/Latin America (!)/Lousiana), .tv (Tuvalu, pretending to be television). Hopefully all these idiots get burnt when the national governments cancel their domains without compensation or unilaterally multiply the fees.
The USPTO seemingly triages patents based on the law firm and the assignee. Joe Schmoe inventor gets pulled through knotholes ("office actions" in the jargon) while patents from big corps sail throught on "first action allowances" all the time.
I know several inventors, one in particular, who have had dozens of patents with big company names as the assignees that sail through no questions asked. This one person decided to patent another invention privately and it was five years of office actions, but finally it issued. He swears he'll never do it again as an individual.
So based on true personal experience, an individual or small company using a good but small lawyer or firm get a patent issued, it's probably a good patent. It takes years, so what may have been cutting edge when it was filed may become obvious (or revealed and then popularized during the prosecution phase). Then when it issues, there exists the legal basis to seek judicial remedy if the infringers do not agree to terms. That's the system.
Big companies, on the other hand, can patent anything and get away with it. The irony is that they can afford legal teams that that can turn bat turds into caviar. I'm speculating here, but I think that if the boot were on the other foot and M$ were suing the browser plugin guy, the guy would never have had the resources to unearth some ridiculously obscure document to assert prior art disclosure. It always comes down to this: money=right.
Of course, the history of the lightbulb is another great example why patents stink. Edison was, in fact, not the inventor. The working lightbulb idea came along in 1809, and various models were developed over the next 65 years. The patent was filed in 1875 by Woodward and Evans, but they couldnt finance the product development. That ended up with Edison (read, the 'more established and well financed company') buying the patent, finalizing product development and reaping the benefits.
The original inventors didnt benefit, the lightbulb would have happened with or without the patent as the surrounding technology had reached the point of making it practical.
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.
Besides the fact that the naming convention used in this patent is obvious, it should also be invalid because it is technically incorrect. It refers to "name.subdomain.domain" as a URL, when it is a fully-qualified host name. A URL would be "http://name.subdomain.domain" or "ftp://name.subdomain.domain".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Oh my god, would you people learn how to spell "ridiculous"? There is no freakin' E in the word! Must be a Slashdot thing. whew, feeling better now...