Free Hosting Patent for Subdomains

[MP1]

The idiots at the patent office issued a patent for free hosting that utilizes automatic account setup and subdomains. This also effects redirect services that offer subdomains and paid hosts that offer a subdomain so clients can access their account before their domain name becomes active. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6687746.WKU.&OS=PN/6687746&RS=PN/6687746

Did anybody else get a certified letter in the mail or am I just lucky? It's going to cost us a fortune in fees to have our lawyer review their claim.

[Decker]

What !!!

And wrong forum!

[MP1]

It looks like the patent was submitted by the old owners of webjump.com in late 1999. Their business failed but now they want to make money by having people pay a license fee to use their patent/idea. I am pretty sure the patent could be voided by prior use because my company was offering the same service in early 1998 but this is going to cost some serious money.

[darkcurves]

Wth is are you talking about?

[WhereToLook]

OMG...

I use to think I was a smart guy... but every time I read a legal document I start to realize just how illiterate I am for gawd's sake...

The document is in English.. but I have no idea what language that is ... @#$%^&*(^&*(#@

As far as I can tell without getting an aneurism, is this thing saying that for every subdomain I create, I have to pay a royalty fee?

I hate lawyers... there should be a translator site for legalese. They have translator sites for every other frickin language...

[Jan]

Can you scan the letter (or the relevant part) and post it for us?

[MP1]

You can see a scan of the letter at http://161.58.167.50/letter.jpg

[Trel]

I'm glad I've read this, I guess I'll be speaking with my lawyer later this week about what actions to take in this matter.

[Decker]

Scam :readthis:

How can somebody claim to have patented 'sub-domains' , just going to pop out and patent putting numbers in front of street names to make it easier to find your house. Then sue everybody that uses them :P

As for licensing they would then have to pay upstream - who invented 'domain names' then who started it all.........

Just ignore them. :biggrin2:

Or threaten them for utilising information copyrighted to your site for demographic manipulation in sales and marketing activities without your consent.

The patent is written in gibberish legalese as usual, but it is based on a false premise and as the conditions for the initial filing of the patent no longer exist it's essentially useless and non functioning as a patent.


Qualified domain names are not only difficult to obtain, but are also, expensive. Thus, usually only persons, web host providers or entities acquire the fully qualified domain names. - false


Currently, any fully qualified domain name or variation thereof is assigned a unique Internet Protocol ("IP") address - false

And that's just the 2 most glaring ones, the whole thing could be picked apart easily, let them incur the legal costs if they insist.

[notnamed]

While I agree with the latter part if the original poster is correct they're not patenting subdomains; but the automatic setup and creation of subdomains for a hosting or redirection purpose.

[Robert]

dont worry about it.

[Epgs]

I don't think they could do anything. I mean ICQ owned a patened on Instant Messaging I believe and someone owned a link on links contained within webpages. I just don't think they could hold up.

[awayfromforum]

Isnt it AIM that owns the patent on instant messanging?

Did you know that nowadays most hosts dont have auto setup and allow you to enter once you signup, for the reason that it would make spammers to easy.