Mailbank was doing this at least two years prior to the patent application. They own common names... for example jones.com. The standard package includes, for a yearly fee, jim@jones.com and http://jim.jones.com.
They are now called NetIdentity. They would essentially be destroyed if asked to pay royalties. But check out the backers:
"NetIdentity was founded in 1996 as Mailbank.com after the company discovered that 70% of the U.S. population shares one of only 9,000 last names. Using a computerized phone directory, NetIdentity sorted out the most common surnames and began buying them. The company is currently owned by a small group of investors including Mark Cuban, the Texas billionaire founder of Broadcast.com."
Slashdot Mirror
Mailbank was doing this at least two years prior to the patent application. They own common names... for example jones.com. The standard package includes, for a yearly fee, jim@jones.com and http://jim.jones.com. They are now called NetIdentity. They would essentially be destroyed if asked to pay royalties. But check out the backers: "NetIdentity was founded in 1996 as Mailbank.com after the company discovered that 70% of the U.S. population shares one of only 9,000 last names. Using a computerized phone directory, NetIdentity sorted out the most common surnames and began buying them. The company is currently owned by a small group of investors including Mark Cuban, the Texas billionaire founder of Broadcast.com."