USPTO Grants CA Lawyer Domain-Naming Patent

SpecialAgentXXX writes "Geek.com reports that as of Dec 30, 2003, CA lawyer Frank Weyer holds patent #6,671,714 which is 'a method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of: assigning each member of said group a URL of the form name.subdomain.domain and assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form [e-mail].' He's now, in SCO-like fashion, suing Network Solutions and Register.com for infringing on his patent. This is nonsense. My friend who ran for political office in 2000 used this exact naming scheme for his web site. All of us here can see how asinine this is. Will our legal system?"

DUPE.

[mekkab]

And I warned the "On Duty" editor, [slashdot.org] but i guess they're just asleep at the wheel.

All we need now are:
1) references to the McDonalds coffee lawsuit
2) SCO jokes
3) a comparison to Falling down at Walmart
4) Posts bemoaning the loss of Goatse

And it'll be a typical Wednesday morning on Slashdot!

Patents/copyrights had been shown asinine...

[bc90021]

...already, when two Australians copyrighted all phone numbers [iafrica.com] way back in 2001.

Link To Patent Text

[Mateito]

Link to patent text [uspto.gov]

Its not like the patent office don't deserve a good slashdotting.

We did that back in '95...

[AtariDatacenter]

When I worked for an ISP many years ago (Galaxy Star Systems), we did that very thing with the domain "tulsa.net". We put their webpages at hostname.tulsa.net. Any email to hostname.tulsa.net was forwarded to their single email account.

We're talking 1995 technology here, and it was obvious at the time.

Well...

[TheSpoom]

I'll just link to my previous comment [slashdot.org] ;^)

Re:Prior art has to be out there...

[YomikoReadman]

How about the US Government? This is how all .mil address are done, AFAIK. the domains are structured base.branchofservice.mil, and all email address associated with them are structured as [e-mail]. That being the case, this method of domain name assignment is as old as the internet itself, since DARPA used this method while setting up ARPANet way back in the 70s. This begs the question of 'How the hell did this patent get approved?'

Contact Info

[Anonymous Coward]

Get angry, folks, and tell these people what you think. Hell hath no fury like a Slashdotter.

Frank Weyer,
Beverly Hills patent attorney
also the founder of EveryMD.com

EveryMD.com
323/874-2567
866-EveryMD (866/383-7963)
[e-mail]

His address:
264 S. La Cienega Blvd., #1224, Beverly Hills, CA 90211

The McDonalds lawsuit was not frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

McFacts [lawandhelp.com]

Everyone thinks the McDonalds lawsuit was an example of how litigation has gotten out of control. Read the site and then tell me how frivolous third degree burns are.

PRIOR ART: mailbank.com

[jtheory]

I missed posting on version one of this story (doing work... frustrating how that gets in the way) so I'm posting my prior art example here.

My personal email address for a long time has been with MailBank.com (now called NetIdentity.com [netidentity.com]). This is how their ENTIRE BUSINESS has been working since 1996: you pay them (yearly) to get email/web addresses using your last name; they own domains like smith.net, and they give you (supposing your name is bubba):
[e-mail]
http://bubba.smith.net

Again, the operative year is 1996 (I got my email from them in 97 or 98).

Prior Art

[djb]

www.netidentity.com have been doing this since at least 1998 when I got my account with them.

Here's some prior art

[Plasmic]

I setup a service just like this in January of 1999. At first glance, it looks a lot like prior art. Here's a description from the web site (archived here [overthelimit.com]):

"We can offer a free sub domain to anyone who wants it ... As an added bonus we are also giving you a FREE e-mail fowarder on the domain you choose. So if you go register http://yourname.overthelimit.com you ALSO get [e-mail]"

Of course, we did it for several different domains for free, since DNS and MX records don't cost anything. Hmm... what to do?

Re:The McDonalds lawsuit was not frivolous

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not "I spilled coffee in my lap, so i should get money" the point is "McDonalds served coffee at an unsafe tempurature." What if she had *gasp* drank the coffee, you know like a normal use of the product and got burned inside her mouth and throat? I suppose since the throat is more sensitive than say your hand, it's still not valid, right? I shouldn't have to wait 20 minutes so I can drink coffee. And it's not a preference, it's a matter of safety. McDonald's served their coffee at an unsafe temperature.

Re:Boy am I tired of these "stupid patent" stories

[Halo1]

Is this just a minor side effect of a basically beneficial system that will simply work itself out as the patents are challenged? Or does this have to be fought?

Software/business method patents are not a basically beneficial system. That's agreed upon by most people, organisations and studies, from the FTC [ffii.org.uk] to even the owners of several mp3 patents, the Fraunhofer Institute [bmwa.bund.de]. Even Andy Grove (you know, the guy that runs Intel) recently said [bsa.org] they have a lot of negative effects (page 11 of the transcript, near the bottom).

If this is something that needs fighting, it would be good to know who is doing this, either on a grassroots level or as elected officials.

In Europe, it's mainly FFII [ffii.org] that does this (along with the majority of the European Parliament, which completetly turned around [ffii.org] a proposed directive to legalise software patents into one that explicitly forbids them).

In the US, I guess it's mainly the EFF and FSF, but I'm not very familiar with the situation there.

Re:Prior art has to be out there...

[the eric conspiracy]

1. The only requirement is that you disclose any prior art that you know about when filing.

2. Yes. If you don't it's fraud.

3. It's up to the patent office and anyone contesting the patent to find the prior art.

If it weren't for the cost of litigating a patent this wouldn't be a problem.

But it is.

Microsoft used this in their Exchange 5 tutorials

[EricTheRed]

When working in UK Local Government a few years ago, we moved from an obscure ICL email system to Exchange 5 then 5.5.

In the documentation that came with Exchange back then was an example on how exchange sites could be linked together with a domain structure identical to what you said. They even used london.domain.com and sydney.domain.com in those examples.

Only covers members of a licensed profession?

[busman]

I quote from the Patent: 6,671,714

What is claimed is:

1. A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of:

assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and

assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "[e-mail];"

wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said members of said group comprise members of a licensed profession

IANAPL, but from the above, it appears that the patent only applys to "Licensed professionals" i.e [e-mail] url: drbob.doctors.com .

and the patent does not apply to me, as the only licence I have is for driving :-)

Re:Prior art has to be out there...

[MO-411]

The examiners, Maung, Zarni and assistant examiner Lin, Kenny should review possible prior art issues irrespective of what the application states. This is what most of their work entails and a good "reason" it takes so long to process an application.

Many choose to simply submit the patent and let the PTO verify prior art. In this case I suspect the prior art search by the examiners resulted in three sites:

• Webpage: Netfirms, Sep. 1998.*
• Webpage: Freeyellow.com, Apr., 1998.*
• Webpage: switchboard.com, Jun. 1996.*

I believe that is what the asterisk entails, I could be wrong...

What is claimed is:

1. A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of:

assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and

assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "[e-mail];"

wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said members of said group comprise members of a licensed profession.

How this patent made it past the obvious I am not clear on. Lord knows most patents sit in the quagmire of the PTO's review system for what seems like an eternity only to be rejected on something like obviousness and prior art.

The patent (6,671,714 [uspto.gov]) is a worth read.

I know I did not address your points directly but the nature of the examination is such where this is a gray area. The courts are supposed to be the final filter, seemingly making it guilty before innocents... when it comes to property rights infringements.

Congratulations on patenting RFC 1034!

[mpaque]

He's managed to get a patent for RFC 1034.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1034.html

Hmmm. That RFC is from 1987. Could it be... prior art?

I think we can safely ignore this USPTO faux pas.

What it will take to challenge

[waterbear]

USPTO, you have pissed us off too many times.
Prepare to be slashdotted.

This sure does look to me like yet another patent without any apparent ingenuity at all.

But before getting ignored by the USPTO, /.ers might like to note first, that the filing date of the application leading to this wretched patent was Nov 23, 1999, so anything done in 2000 can't be relied on as prior art.

Second, the subject of the patent appears to be the coordinated allocation of email addresses and matching web addresses, such as an email address of [e-mail], along with a web address of http://willrobinson.physicians.org.

While I would personally agree that this is a case of 'Eureka - not!', that won't cut any ice at the USPTO. In reality, evidence of relevant prior art would be needed to take this out.

The prior art would include (a) anything that was used in the US or published in print before 23 Nov 1998, (b) anything used in the US or published in print in the period 11/23/98-11/22/99 -- except insofar as the 'inventors' don't prove that they 'invented' it first, and (c) anything 'invented' in the US before the named inventors did it, whenever that was.

-wb-

Re:Prior art has to be out there... (See the RFC)

[Marble68]

Domains / Sub Domains.

That's why we have terms like TLD, nth level domain, et al.

Friggin' DNS was DESIGNED to do this. Use of DNS for Child / Parent domains should NOT be patentable. Regardless of the cutesy little twist on the application of inherits functionality.

Has no one EVER setup a server and had it handle email for [e-mail]? What's the difference between this a surname? [e-mail] or [e-mail]?

Prior art issues aside, this is like patenting chewing when someone uses a fork. [See Icon]

The patent office, besides looking for prior art, should at least grasp the technologies that patents being applied for are based upon.

Many "No Crap, You Morons!" [NCYM} issues expressed by opponents of SW patents are because the requested patent is a direct benefit of the insight and forward thinking thoughtfulness of the online community when designing standards, protocols, and the like.

This is patently absurd.

Prior art from 1995

[kaip]

The patent claims functionality that IKI.FI [www.iki.fi], among others, has been providing publicly for thousands of users since 1995.

IKI.FI has a web page that documents the prior art for the patent 6,617,714 [www.iki.fi].

I hope the courts recognize prior art

[olivercromwell]

It should be a no brainer for the courts to deal with this one. Basically, as I understand it, a patent may not be granted if prior art exists. Given that the DNS and email have existed in some form or another for a long time now, and predating the original application date of this patent, the USPTO ought not to have granted it to begin with. However, from what I have read about the total disarray at the USPTO, it is not surprising that this amde it through. Apparently, they are so overwhelmed they just pull out a rubber stamp if no one opposes the application. Heck, I believe it was slashdotted when a lawyer, as an object example of how silly the system has become, had his child file for, and receive a patant on the swing.

Re:What about obviousness?

[DickBreath]

It is obvious as you say.

The problem is with the USPTO's argument. If it is so obvious, then why didn't anyone do it earlier? Thus you need prior art to invalidate it.

The USPTO is badly broken.

Netidentity/Mailbank, since 1996 Prior Art found

[HDlife]

Here it is, exactly, in 1998 at Mailbank.

Mailbank.com at Archive.org, Nov. 11, 1998. [archive.org]

Just send me my reward money now. I've been using those domain hijackers for years for email/web.

Re:What it will take to challenge

[tonyr60]

Well this appears to be an example oif prior art...

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0799.txt?number=0799

And dated September 1981!

Hmm... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't :

First Name . Middle . Last Name

A pre-existing work?