Patent for sub domain names ........

[jberryhill]

"this seemed to be well known knowledge"

Then anyone bothered about it should have no difficulty producing evidence of same in the form of a publication or evidence of public use in the US of some kind.

Incidentally, the famous "XOR patent" mentioned earlier in the thread expired years ago.

 

[theparrot]

"this seemed to be well known knowledge"

Then anyone bothered about it should have no difficulty producing evidence of same in the form of a publication or evidence of public use in the US of some kind.

Agreed. It should be easy to show this patent as one that never should have been issued. The biggest problem may be to find a publication, most work of this sort is `published' by putting it up for ftp, and talk in mailing lists. If they really start asking for large payouts, so it becomes worthwhile for someone to fight it, I imagine someone will figure out ways to show what was being done then.

Incidentally, the famous "XOR patent" mentioned earlier in the thread expired years ago.

Yes, and recently the RSA patent, and LZW patents have expired (at least in the USA). At least patents expire in ones life time, unlike copyrights these days.

 

[Nameable]

Jeez. Ask any sysadmin. You set up wildcard dns, point it at one IP, assign that IP to your webserver, and run a script on that webserver that checks the HTTP HOST header and serves up different content based on this piece of information.

It's been done numerous times since the early 1990's by tons of ISPs -- I worked on a system that did it in '96, I'm sure others did it before we did. I didn't own the code, so no I can't prove it today, but I'm SURE many others can.

#10 makes it sound like a PPC search service like DomainSpa -- they want you to set up wildcard dns, then they serve the framed page included bidded content.

The first inventor in the list has this book review on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...-6930179-2622462?v=glance&vi=customer-reviews

This leads me to jump to the conclusion that this is coming from some techno-dweeb who left his basement just long enough to write down his idea and call a patent lawyer. I can't wait to see them try to enforce this one.

 

[pam]

This leads me to jump to the conclusion that this is coming from some techno-dweeb who left his basement just long enough to write down his idea and call a patent lawyer. I can't wait to see them try to enforce this one.

One of the people laying claim to ownership of the patent is well-known in the adult industry and owns several adult businesses. Some claim HE was using sub-domains himself back in the early 90's

When Acacia began sending us (adult webmasters) letters, people said that our own industry was ready to pounce with patent claims and we would be surprised.

Supposedly this is just the tip of the iceberg, with many more patent claims to follow.

 

[Domagon]

For folks seeking prior art on this...

From what I recall, Mindspring offered user named 3rd level domains for many customers prior to 1999.

In regards to categories, the original .US ccTLD is based on categories, including function, geography, etc. In addition, .US was designed to allow for user named 4th level domains, and some delegated 3rd level .US operators offered them way, way before 1999.

Sparse on the details above, but should provide a good starting point for folks challenging this bogus patent.

Ron