SubDomains Patented!

[Brett_Tabke]

[slashdot.org...]
[thewhir.com...]

Nevada-based Ideaflood Inc. (ideaflood.com). The letter stated that Ideaflood has patented the idea of assigning users subdomains, such as AutomotiveWidgets.hostingcompany.com.

[Webwork]

My nerves jangle when I read about crap like this.

Did some idiot in the USPTO actually grant a patent? Guess so.

Didn't anyone witness the posting for this patent application and not file any form of objection? You know, applications are public record, so anyone can file an objection. Public apathy probably contributed to the granting. Apathy and possibly the belief that the USPTO would never grant such a patent.

Why there isn't a public watchdog organization, overlooking the USTPO, also escapes me. That would be an organization that would review the applications and alert concerned organizations of the potential threat.

Lastly, I just get the urge to crush the life out of the person and the lawyer who backs up this kind of hoo-hah. Phrases like abuse of process, extortion, etc. come to mind. The sad part is, that if I went after this type of miscreant, they would raise as a defense "I've got the government seal of approval" and, you know what? It would likely be a decent defense, strictly as a legal matter. Otherwise not decent at all in this case.

Where's Charles Bronson when you need him?

[ukgimp]

What next a patent for calling a file ".htm"

More nuttyness from across the pond.

[Webwork]

Remember, your forefathers sent my ancestors across the pond to breed and multiply. If your forefathers treated us better you wouldn't get off the hook so easily ;-).

[Edwin]

Perhaps somebody needs to set up an open-source "patent whacking service" where people can go and check out the latest patent applications and file objections to them automatically. The site could then batch up the objections and feed them periodically to volunteer (pro-bono) lawyers who could use the info to quickly put together the mallet to whack those naughty fake-patent moles as soon as they poked their heads out...

[edit_g]

Watch out Brett, I'm off to patent online discussion fora (forums?)... Next I will patent shoes and shoelaces! The world is my shellfish! Shellfish! I could patent that as well!

Don't blame the patent office or the company - Hanlon's Razor and all that...

[blaze]

The only thing sillier than some patents are people who complain about patents without actually reading them first.

My understanding upon reading the abstract and claims is that this technique doesn't involve regular subdomains / dns

"The domain retrieval system locates the domain referenced by the domain name by parsing header information and utilizing a wildcard DNS"

"the domain name including a user-selected subdomain label that is not associated with an IP address in a zone file of any higher-level domain".

I believe idea is how to deal with subdomains which are outside dns forwarding files.

It is an interesting idea. Is it patentable? Arguable, but they certainly aren't 'patenting subdomains'.

If someone sees something different, please let me know..

--
[patft.uspto.gov...]

[Hunter]

and to think that just last week someone being given the right to sell moon land seemed crazy..

[john_k]

Anyone out there working for the USPTO? If so, I have words 3 for you:

Google: RFC list

Using just RFCs as prior art, the patent should be thrown out.

RFC 757 (Sept 1979), an early description of the evolving domain-name system

From RFC 1498, the substance of which was first published in a magazine in 1982:

Any of the four kinds of objects (service, node, network attachment point, and path) may have a name, though Shoch would restrict that term to human-readable character strings.

RFC 819 (Aug 1982)
In general, all (most?) ideas in the patent could be said to be obvious after this RFC. Here is one quote from the introduction though:

The intent is that the Internet names be used to form a tree-structured administrative dependent, rather than a strictly topology dependent, hierarchy. The left-to-right string of name components proceeds from the most specific to the most general, that is, the root of the tree, the administrative universe, is on the right.

The name service for realizing the Internet naming convention is assumed to be application independent. It is not a part of any particular application, but rather an independent name service serves different user applications.

Throughout this RFC, the author takes pains to emphasize that the names in a domain are not tied to a machine or machine address, and that the ultimate use of the left-most, or "sub-domains" (term not used in the RFC) is left up to the application.

RFC 882 (Nov 1983) - Domain names: Concepts and facilities
Here is where the domain name system begins taking shape. This RFC describes or predicts every one of the claims in the patent. One telling quote from this RFC (from page 3):

However, to preserve the generality of the domain mechanism, domain names are not required to have a one-to-one correspondence with host names, host addresses, or any other type of information.

Also read from the bottom of page 6 through page 7. Again, the import is that a domain name space is a tree structure, with the most specific resource identified by the left-hand most name. The "*" character is to represent a wildcard that can be used to match any resource.

These are just the very early RFCs. They were supersceded several times over before that patent was filed.

[xbase234]

Truly outrageous. If actually enforced, this patent will have huge implications.

Webwork, do you have any thoughts on the process of getting this patent revoked? Would the patent holder basically have to sue a "violator" and lose the case before it is deemed invalid, or could the patent office reconsider its grant?

Brett - you may have a site headline here. My jaw hit the floor when I read this thread.