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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.

4 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. 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.

  3. 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
  4. 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."