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Subdomains Part Of The Patent Frenzy

Posted by timothy on from the march-fools dept.

Colonel Angus writes "Web Hosting Industry is carrying a story about a company called Ideaflood that has been sending out letters to web hosting firms claiming that they own a patent on subdomains and are claiming a license needs to be purchased to continue to use them. This is reminding me of the hyperlink patent from a couple years back." Maybe Frank Weyer will ask them to wrestle.

8 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Patenting an RFC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    prior art = November 1987

    And in other news, tomorrow, I'm patenting the misspelling of referrer in electronic comunication.

  2. Ideaflood = who? by mybecq · · Score: 4, Informative
    ideaflood.com says:
    Ideaflood, Inc. has more than 30 patents and patent applications,
    many of which were filed before the US Patent and Trademark Office
    began publishing patent applications, and cover many widely used and
    easily recognizable technologies that make the internet possible and
    profitable. Much of Ideaflood's intellectual property is just as
    central to core internet functions, but operate behind-the-scenes on
    network servers and other back-end hardware and software.

    whois.net says:
    Organization Name: IdeaFlood, Inc
    Name: DOMAIN FOR SALE
    [snip]
    Record Created on........ 1999-11-05

    I say:
    Phooey.

    (PS. We're so big we don't even run our own nameservers!)
  3. Re:Over and Over and Over by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's an article on the Foundation for Programming Freedom by Richard Stallman titled 'Anatomy of a Trivial Patent'. Read this and you will see how people sneak these patents past the PO.

  4. Re:Over and Over and Over by jfengel · · Score: 4, Informative

    They also look at the references you provide. I know; I got hammered because I provided lots of references, and had to spend months explaining how my work was novel over the referenced documents. If I'd just skipped doing the prior art myself, I would have saved myself a lot of time and legal fees.

  5. Did even ONE of you RTFA??? by humanerror · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obviously, the submitter didn't bother any more than any of you to follow through to the source...

    The patent is for an automated procedure for licensing sub-domain names via an Internet portal , not on subdomains - the submitter's claim is considerably more absurd than the patent claim, no matter your views on software and business model patents.

    --
    "We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
  6. Which patent is this? by jfengel · · Score: 4, Informative

    They list only two patents that have actually been granted, "Method,apparatus and system for directing access to content on a computer network" (which seems to cover cross-linking between web sites where there's some sort of traffic-exchange system in place, such as ad banners) and "Method and apparatus for gaming" (guaranteeing a minimum payout for gambling.)

    The article doesn't say what patent the letter refers to, if indeed it references an actual patent at all. They have an _application_ for a patent on Method and apparatus for conducting domain name service, whose idea seems to be that ICANN doesn't control subdomains, so you can sell your subdomains yourself as long as you manage it.

    That is, if you own foo.com, you can't really sell "bar.foo.com" to somebody else, at least not using the standard domain registries, because they just don't do that. The solution (running your own domain name server and providing a web site to control it, basically acting like your own TLD) is pretty damn obvious, but not a whole lot more obvious than lots of other patents that have been granted.

    But the thing is, at least as far as I can tell, they don't have a patent yet. They only have an application. Suing people is WAY jumping the gun. It might even be illegal, but IANAL. That patent is over two and a half years old, so it's about time the thing got approved. Maybe it is approved and the USPTO hasn't updated its web site, and ideaflood is being quick off the mark.

    As far as I can tell, the usual advice seems to apply: it's a pointless patent with lots of prior art, so don't cave in and don't send these idiots a penny.

  7. Re:Over and Over and Over by Dashing+Leech · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can't sue the government generally, or it's agents, unless Congress gives you permission.

    (IANAL but...) I'm not sure where this comes from. It's quite easy to sue various forms of government and government agents, such as the police (false arrest, rights violations), prosecutors (prosecutorial misconduct), Congress , and various federal agencies.

  8. You can't sue the gov't unless it lets you by kuma_act · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, this is a true statement. The doctrine of sovereign immunity protects the government from being sued unless it allows the suit. This is a pretty complex subject, so I'll try to make this as "user-friendly" as I can. The Federal Government and the governments of the individual states are protected from suit unless they allow it. In order to allow the suit, the legislative body (Congress, state assembly, etc.) has to pass a law allowing the suit. Most states and the Federal Government have passed statutes that allow you to sue them under specified circumstances, i.e., for specified types of claims (civil rights violations, tort claims, breach of contract claims), but only if you comply with strict notice requirements. If you don't comply with the requirements of the statute, your case gets thrown out because of sovereign immunity. So I guess the answer really is "You can sue the government, but only if they let you."