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.'"

Comments

Slightly funnier take

[fname]

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.

Re:Slightly funnier take

[FatHogByTheAss]

I suppose the good news is that these things are clearly defined via RFC, so identifying prior art shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Slightly funnier take

[the_mad_poster]

Technically, you can apply for a patent on anything. You could even apply for a patent on someone's else's patent if you were looking for a way to burn a lot of money real quick.

The thing is, people patent stupid shit all the time. Shining a flashlight on the floor and having a cat chase it is a patented exercise system for pets. The problem is that they'd never be able to enforce it, the owner of the patent would pretty much be laughed right out of the courtroom as long as the defendant showed up. Then, they'd lose it.

The USPTO will play lip service to any idiot that can pay them. They just sort of leave it up to the courts to decide whether or not there was any intelligent driving force behind the patent or not. Fear not, this "entrepreneur" will be shot down pretty quickly. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here, just a bunch of braindead corporate lawyers.

Re:Slightly funnier take

[autocracy]

Well, yes, but - for all those actions it takes, don't you think somebody should have stood up, pointed at this one, and gone "duh?"

Re:Slightly funnier take

[Dun Malg]

What's the difference between a geek with a perfectly normal rectuma and a geek with a disatrously distended rectum? One had a lawyer to defend him after he was busted by Constitution-shredding RIAA private investigators after forgetting to load PeerGuardian while he downloaded the Complete Led Zeppelin off Suprnova, and the other one didn't.

The fact that having a lawyer is often necessary does not in any way make lawyers good.

As to the argument that "if the laws weren't so messed up, then the RIAA goons couldn't come after me" I'd ask /. collectively, when was the last time those of you who live in democracies voted? Do you vote eagerly? Do you wake up (in the US) on Primary Tuesdays and cast a vote so you won't be stuck with party candidates you hate?

Cripes, man, what are you talking about? If I vote, which lawyer (most politicians are lawyers) should I vote for? The entire root of the problem is that lawyers have been allowed to make law. Voting is a sham. It's a way for us citizens/children to make token gestures and claim "look Mommy, I'm helping!"

Corporations control America today not because the American system is broken, but because people bitch and bitch and bitch but aren't willing to do the hard work necessary to make sure the system does what it's supposed to. You wouldn't fill your car's gas tank up with water, right? And you wouldn't use a 10-year-old rubber band in place of a bike chain? You wouldn't build your beach house out of sand, would you?

That paragraph doesn't even make sense. Are you saying people are stupid and therefore shouldn't complain, or that complaining about bad laws is like a sand beach house?

You forget that abusive plaintiff's lawyers (the ones you're really griping about) only survive because the system is currently so chaotic and broken that they're able to make loads of money working the nooks and crannies of the broken system, just

So the voters' continually elect lawyers to write law, and it's the voters who shoulder all the blame because they should know better than to elect lawyers?

People make lawyer jokes, and they're funny, I suppose. But just remember something someone who was in prison after having a crappy court-appointed lawyer lose his case for him told me: the only lawyer you ever wished you could have is the one you realized you needed after a lifetime telling yourself they weren't wanted.

People make lawyer jokes because such a huge percentage of lawyers are scum. The law is a parasite on society. It's an arbitrary game of devised by an intellectually inbred subculture that has, by virtue of their power, made themselves necessary. Necessary is not the same thing as good. Lawyers are a necessary evil, and little else.

What the....

[TypoNAM]

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!

Suing is evidently a business model

[RobPiano]

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.

Re:Suing is evidently a business model

[micromoog]

When did the business model "I created a patent just so I could sue you" a socially acceptable business practice?

The words "socially acceptable business practice" no longer have any meaning in the United States. The general thinking is that if it makes money, it must be OK, and ethics be damned. It doesn't help that our current political leadership shares this view.

whoops....

[Lxy]

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.

I hope they win

[Flower]

Every win is just another brick in the wall to prove that this practice is bullshit and requires that Congress change the stupid law. It's obvious that nothing's going to happen until it starts to hurt comapnies with some pull.

Also be a great example to the EU of what not to allow.

Re:Not as bad as SCO.

[The Blue Meanie]

I haven't actually dug through the patent, but even if it just covers third-level domains, it most certainly could be applied to .com, .net, .org and so on. What's to stop someone who owns example.com and uses emails like user@example.com from also using user.example.com as a website?

For an example a little closer to home, look at sourceforge.net. project.sourceforge.net is how they hand out URLS. If they allow email addresses project@sourceforge.net, they'd be violating this patent as well, right?

Re:Please, read the patent...

[AnotherBlackHat]

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.

How 'bout requiring a bond which is given to the first person to invalidate the patent.

-- this is not a .sig

HAH, that's not a URL !

[anti-NAT]

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.

Re:Prior art, DNS zone files

[NtroP]

There needs to be some kind of punitive damage for people who attempt to patent things that are not only covered by prior art, but has been in the Public Domain, for over 20 years before the application.

No. There needs to be some kind of punitive damage for the people who approve a patent application that is not only covered by prior art, but are in the Public Domain, for over 20 years before the application!

I say we need to start holding the U.S. Patent Office accountable for the actions of their "lazy, incompetent, government" employees.

BTW, I am a government employee. And if I did my job as poorly as they do, I'd expect to get my ass booted out into the cold, pronto!

Re:Stop the World i wana get off

[shadowmatter]

Yes, the patent office is in a very sorry state indeed. I go to a respectable public university, and last week I caught sight of a flyer that said "Not know what you're doing after graduation? Try Patent Law..." Now I think it's good that they're trying to recruit people from decent universities, and it's okay to not know exactly what you want to do after college, but I thought it was appealing to the lowest common denominator. Which didn't exactly fill me with hope.

Re:Stop the World i wana get off

[Thoguth]

I'm sure some university way back used the same naming convention.

Easier than that. The patent was filed in November 1999. In the patent itself it references websites, including:

Webpage: Freeyellow.com, Apr., 1998.*
Webpage: switchboard.com, Jun. 1996.*

As in, Freeyellow (subdomain) . com (domain) and switchboard (subdomain) . com (domain). These frickin' crackheads used prior art three+ years before they filed the patent, and referenced it in the patent. Tell me it's April Fools' Day.