Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Grants CA Lawyer Domain-Naming Patent
SpecialAgentXXX writes "Geek.com reports
that as of Dec 30, 2003, CA lawyer Frank Weyer holds patent #6,671,714
which is '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.' He's now, in SCO-like fashion, suing Network
Solutions and Register.com for infringing on his patent. This is
nonsense. My friend who ran for political office in 2000 used this exact naming scheme for his web site. All of us here
can see how asinine this is. Will our legal system?"
you have pissed us off too many times.
Prepare to be slashdotted.
--Xandu
And I warned the "On Duty" editor, but i guess they're just asleep at the wheel.
All we need now are:
1) references to the McDonalds coffee lawsuit
2) SCO jokes
3) a comparison to Falling down at Walmart
4) Posts bemoaning the loss of Goatse
And it'll be a typical Wednesday morning on Slashdot!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This patent was filed on November 23, 1999.
There has to be prior art out there that shoots this down.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Don't get mad. This is good news. It means we're one day closer to patent reform.
...already, when two Australians copyrighted all phone numbers way back in 2001.
libertarianswag.com
Link to patent text
Its not like the patent office don't deserve a good slashdotting.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
I am now in danger of stepping on his IP!! Technically couldn't this guy sue any website owner under the 'name@subdomain.domain' portion? Is it possible this person is doing this, though, for a good cause? Maybe he is sick of seeing this sort of thing happen so he worked out this scheme to make the legal system look at how rediculous alot of these patents are? It's just a theory. I sure hope that is the case though.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." -D. Adams
Wake the patent office up and sue THEM! :)
This really needs to be a presidential election issue. I'll vote for whoever says they will end Internet Technology patents.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
It's most definitely a case of "Hey, I wonder if I can nab this now and later screw the world out of their money..." Though when it comes right down to the letter of his patent, how can he sue Network Solutions and Registrar.com? THEY'RE not the ones who's actually DOING the process - all they're doing is lining up domains with IP addresses. It's all of the individual websites and ISPs that are supposedly infringing his patent - at least, the ones that set up e-mail and websites the way he describes.
This case won't stand up in court, and for it to stand up at all, it would have to be against an ISP or organization that assigns URLs and e-mails in the precise fashion his patent states - like my old website (now defunct) guy.thetaint.org with my e-mail having had been guy@thetaint.org.
I'm going to patent a method of manually stimulating the male organ to orgasm. And watch out, I have lawyers.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
When I worked for an ISP many years ago (Galaxy Star Systems), we did that very thing with the domain "tulsa.net". We put their webpages at hostname.tulsa.net. Any email to hostname.tulsa.net was forwarded to their single email account.
We're talking 1995 technology here, and it was obvious at the time.
I think the message is pretty clear after all these stories: a lot of really dumb patents are granted.
Is this just a minor side effect of a basically beneficial system that will simply work itself out as the patents are challenged? Or does this have to be fought?
If this is something that needs fighting, it would be good to know who is doing this, either on a grassroots level or as elected officials.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.'
...
You know what's funny? the USPTO is supposed to do prior art research to grant patents. Well guess where you can find prior art for this method? at the USPTO itself. Here for example:
estta.uspto.gov is a live server, and
estta@uspto.gov is a valid email address at USPTO.
You gotta love these guys
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'll just link to my previous comment ;^)
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
Given your friend ran for office in 2000 and this patent was filed in 1999 that doesn't constitute prior art. It just means that your friend might have been violating the patent.
I think it's stupid and it sucks but that's the worst-thought-out "reason" for having a patent overturned I've heard since... well, for a good few days at least.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Get angry, folks, and tell these people what you think. Hell hath no fury like a Slashdotter.
Frank Weyer,
Beverly Hills patent attorney
also the founder of EveryMD.com
EveryMD.com
323/874-2567
866-EveryMD (866/383-7963)
fweyer@everymd.com
His address:
264 S. La Cienega Blvd., #1224, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
"Case dismissed, suing party shot for being total asshole."
What do you have against the the postal service?
While America works to protect intellectual property, everyone else is innovating.
The present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a method, apparatus and business system that allow a user to quickly communicate online with a member of a particular business, professional or other group regardless of whether the member has an internet presence (e.g. e-mail address or website) and without the user needing to know or find the internet address for the recipient.
He's already refereing to prior art, and it actualy seems his "idea" is a bit different from what we already use and know.
The patented system would allow someone to write directly to some professional without knowing his email address. It would be a simpler system than to have to use a search engine and then search an email on the website to communicate.
I must agree this is a very subtle difference and the guy's interpretation is stupid. However, just because of that, I am vey curious to see how the lawsuits turn out.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
I missed posting on version one of this story (doing work... frustrating how that gets in the way) so I'm posting my prior art example here.
My personal email address for a long time has been with MailBank.com (now called NetIdentity.com). This is how their ENTIRE BUSINESS has been working since 1996: you pay them (yearly) to get email/web addresses using your last name; they own domains like smith.net, and they give you (supposing your name is bubba):
bubba@smith.net
http://bubba.smith.net
Again, the operative year is 1996 (I got my email from them in 97 or 98).
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
www.netidentity.com have been doing this since at least 1998 when I got my account with them.
As long as I can remember I got addresses from Hypermart like:
- testpharm.hypermart.net (I got it in 1998-1999)
- dthomas9.hypermart.net
and the email address was accordinglyname@testpharm.hypermart.net
Also as far as I can remember Yahoo had addresses that I could use to go directly to the relevant page rather than going via the home page - like
- finance.yahoo.com
- my.yahoo.com
- news.yahoo.com
- etc
AndThese are some of the applications I remember offhand, and I am sure there has to be stuff like this that was there before this patent was filed.
As it is, it is pretty stupid to give a patent for something that is quite functional - but is it innovative ? And worse, should you be able to prevent others from using it without paying extortion money ?
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Aww, man... and I just had business cards printed up with my email address.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
Are we reaching a point where every RFC should be submitted as a patent application, just to prevent others from doing it than suing everyone who follows a standard?
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
As absurd as this is, this guy is an attorney. He has the knowledge and ability to fight this as long as he likes. He can also file any number of countless lawsuits and fight them all himself thus costing millions of dollars in attorney fees to those he is sueing. He could make the arguement.. it is better to settle than fight this forever. Extorsion.
URLs don't come in the form "name.subdomain.domain". According to the syntax for URLs in RFC2396, a URI (or URL) starts with the scheme (like http). So the patent should be about assigning URLs in the form "http://name.subdomain.domain/". The patent should be summarily thrown out for being incorrect.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
Reading this article, and the many that came before on the subject of "silly patents", the following occurs to me:
... so how's it done?", lift me into god-like status, blinding all those in a three-mile radius around me with my sheer brilliance.
/. frontpage belong to some arcane subgroup of humanity the members of which should strike through one, if not both of the "sapiens" following the implied description of their species.
- There is hardly a workday that passes where I am not called upon to come up with several solutions to problems that, by the standards given by this patent, are eminently patentable.
- The solutions I come up with that make me happy, about once a fortnight - meaning that I drink my next cup of coffee with a smile - are pure fucking genius, and by rights ought to make me richer than Bill.
- The solutions I come up with, about once every couple of months, where I actually wave my co-workers over and go "lookit this!", and am disappointed if they don't go "neeet!
The fact that the people in my immediate environment are not blind tells me either A) that, in fact, most people working in IT have gained this god-like status and are immune to the blinding light, or B) that the people who came up with those patents that do hit the
/end rant
Well, at least guys like this make SCO feel less alone in the world.
yes, we have no bananas
When working in UK Local Government a few years ago, we moved from an obscure ICL email system to Exchange 5 then 5.5.
In the documentation that came with Exchange back then was an example on how exchange sites could be linked together with a domain structure identical to what you said. They even used london.domain.com and sydney.domain.com in those examples.
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
IANAPL, but from the above, it appears that the patent only applys to "Licensed professionals" i.e drbob@doctors.com url: drbob.doctors.com
and the patent does not apply to me, as the only licence I have is for driving
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Even if prior art is found, patents are assumed by courts to be of good quality. So, even if someone argues, successfully, prior art, some of the patent claims could still be used against other defendants. Basically, this is legal extortion by the patent holder and a make-work program for attourneys. And guess what! Attourneys are one of the most powerful and well funded political organizations in the United States!
So yes, keep the PTO broken - so the legal system will "work" just fine. Where's my LSAT prep book?
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
He's managed to get a patent for RFC 1034.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1034.html
Hmmm. That RFC is from 1987. Could it be... prior art?
I think we can safely ignore this USPTO faux pas.
USPTO, you have pissed us off too many times.
/.ers might like to note first, that the filing date of the application leading to this wretched patent was Nov 23, 1999, so anything done in 2000 can't be relied on as prior art.
Prepare to be slashdotted.
This sure does look to me like yet another patent without any apparent ingenuity at all.
But before getting ignored by the USPTO,
Second, the subject of the patent appears to be the coordinated allocation of email addresses and matching web addresses, such as an email address of willrobinson@physicians.org, along with a web address of http://willrobinson.physicians.org.
While I would personally agree that this is a case of 'Eureka - not!', that won't cut any ice at the USPTO. In reality, evidence of relevant prior art would be needed to take this out.
The prior art would include (a) anything that was used in the US or published in print before 23 Nov 1998, (b) anything used in the US or published in print in the period 11/23/98-11/22/99 -- except insofar as the 'inventors' don't prove that they 'invented' it first, and (c) anything 'invented' in the US before the named inventors did it, whenever that was.
-wb-
Now the lawyers are getting patents. This was to be expected. If they have to wait for some semi-fraudulent IP business to hire them, they might have to wait several weeks or even months. This way, they get immediate and full benefit from their lowlife tactics. Ingenious.
"A Process to Patent Methods that are Obvious"
"A Process to Patent Methods that have Prior Art"
Then, all of these people will be violating my patents when they do these sorts of things. It'll stop the stupid patents and/or make me rich. Either way, I'm happy.
If it doesn't pan out, I might follow up by patenting "A Method for Patenting Inventions". That should shut the whole patent office down since they would be violating my patent each time they award any patent.
Domains / Sub Domains.
That's why we have terms like TLD, nth level domain, et al.
Friggin' DNS was DESIGNED to do this. Use of DNS for Child / Parent domains should NOT be patentable. Regardless of the cutesy little twist on the application of inherits functionality.
Has no one EVER setup a server and had it handle email for sa@servername.domain.net? What's the difference between this a surname? Joe@smith.mydomain.com or Joe@smith.com?
Prior art issues aside, this is like patenting chewing when someone uses a fork. [See Icon]
The patent office, besides looking for prior art, should at least grasp the technologies that patents being applied for are based upon.
Many "No Crap, You Morons!" [NCYM} issues expressed by opponents of SW patents are because the requested patent is a direct benefit of the insight and forward thinking thoughtfulness of the online community when designing standards, protocols, and the like.
This is patently absurd.
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
The patent claims functionality that IKI.FI, among others, has been providing publicly for thousands of users since 1995.
IKI.FI has a web page that documents the prior art for the patent 6,617,714.
I thought they were not supposed to be obvious to anyone skilled in the field. This is so damned obvious that anyone in or out of the field can see it. What the hell happened to common sense?
Infuriate left and right
It should be a no brainer for the courts to deal with this one. Basically, as I understand it, a patent may not be granted if prior art exists. Given that the DNS and email have existed in some form or another for a long time now, and predating the original application date of this patent, the USPTO ought not to have granted it to begin with. However, from what I have read about the total disarray at the USPTO, it is not surprising that this amde it through. Apparently, they are so overwhelmed they just pull out a rubber stamp if no one opposes the application. Heck, I believe it was slashdotted when a lawyer, as an object example of how silly the system has become, had his child file for, and receive a patant on the swing.
Mailbank.com at Archive.org, Nov. 11, 1998.
Just send me my reward money now. I've been using those domain hijackers for years for email/web.
I think that congress needs to make the patent office responsible for legal fees incurred by defendants in patent cases when a patent is found to be unenforceable. That would reduce the number of obviously non-original and non-novel patents being granted to unscrupulous lawyers who think they are going to hit the jackpot by patenting something that has already been done and then suing the companies that have two decades of prior art.