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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.
Link to patent text
Its not like the patent office don't deserve a good slashdotting.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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-
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.