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

[pam]

All I can say is holy shit and yes, people have already been served notice that they are in violation of the patent.

Patent for sub domain names

[domnet]

You link does not work.

[armstrong]

Patents can be challenged and rendered invalid through proof of prior art that wasn't considered during the patenting process. I imagine that a big companywill go this route before paying up ransom money to this comedian.

[pam]

Sorry, it truncated

Try this

[armstrong]

The link to see the patent is a sudomain (patft.uspto.gov)! I wonder when the patent-holder will go after the USPTO.

[theparrot]

hmmm... well I personally have prior art, just wonder if I can prove it, have to check the inet archives and see but I set up subdomains for a web site in 1998 and the file date was in 1999.

[theparrot]

oh, and it also seems to fall under the 'resonably known knowledge to practicionars in the art' clause, but then others that do such as the XOR cursor patent are still considered valid as far as I know.

[armstrong]

Its easy enough to prove prior art. Before 1999, lots of people were using www2.somedomain.com to denote alternate servers, or test platforms. See yahoo's for example:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www2.yahoo.com - first entry date = Oct 17, 1996!

[theparrot]

Originally Posted by armstrong

Its easy enough to prove prior art. Before 1999, lots of people were using www2.somedomain.com to denote alternate servers, or test platforms. See yahoo's for example:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www2.yahoo.com - first entry date = Oct 17, 1996!

ww2.yahoo.com is not subdomain delegation, it is just a different host at the same domain level as www.yahoo.com, to see subdomain delegation
see people.wiki.bin.org , netbsd.wiki.bin.org, where in this case all of the wiki.bin.org can be controled on its own. This is designed into and talked about in the rfcs for DNS though, so I can not see how that can be patented. Guess I will have to take some time and actually read the patent to find out.

[FineE]

Actually www.yahoo.com is a subdomain delegation of yahoo.com. However to look for "prior art" I would look at the Internet in the early 1990's and late 1980's even before comercialization of the Internet

Very common sudomain delegations were for example (I am using priorartexisted.com as an example)

ftp.priorartexisted.com (for ftp severs)
mail.priorartexisted.com (for email servers)
gopher.priorartexisted.com (for gopher servers)

and of course www.priorartexisted.com when the http protocol was developed among others.

It was also very common to have different servers for each function since computers were much less powerful in those days.

[theparrot]

It is not a delegation if the delegate can not create subdomins, in the case of www.yahoo.com, the delegation is of yahoo.com as you said, and yahoo.com is a from .com, which again shows that the patent should be on thin ground since dns never existed without delegation... though none of your examples show delegation
ftp.domainname.com
mail.domainame.com
gopher.domainname.com
wais.domainname.com
are all at the same level. But then you already know that from the yahoo example above. But your point does illustrate dns always used subdomain delegation right from the start.

[FineE]

If one is looking for a delegation involving multiple sub domains here are in an example back to 1997

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...ancouver.bc.ca

and

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...ancouver.bc.ca

The sites are www.city.vancouver.bc.ca and city.vancouver.bc.ca

In the United States try old civic and state sites in the .us domain. Multiple sub domains and delegations were and are a lot more popular among government and academic sites than in commercial sites.

[dbird]

yeah, in fact the dns designers envisions much more delegation then happened, they never thought everyone would be crammed into the 1st level after .com

[jberryhill]

The subject matter that is legally protected by a patent is limited to the specific claims of the patent (those numbered sentences called "claims"). This particular patent has two independent claims - claim 1 and claim 12. Another of the dependent claims incorporate by reference all of the limitations of the claim(s) to which they refer.

So, for example, in order to infringe claim 1, you have to do everything set forth here, which is a lot more than simply configuring subdomains:

------
1. A method for enabling internet access to content located by a domain name, 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, the method comprising:

operating a host having an IP address specified by an internet-class resource record for a domain name server, in that the resource record associates the host IP address to a host domain name in a zone file of the domain name server, and wherein the host domain name comprises (a) a subdomain labeled with a designated wildcard character of a domain name system and (b) at least one: higher-level domain name;

configuring a content address according to a content storage system of the host independently of the domain name system, the content address comprising a user-selected label, wherein the user-selected label comprises at least one character that is not the designated wildcard character;

storing content in the content storage system, the content addressed by the content address;

receiving a domain name configured in accordance with the domain name system, the domain name comprising the host domain name with the user-selected label substituted for the designated wildcard character;

determining the content address from the user-selected label;

retrieving the content from the content storage system using the content address; and

serving the content.
--------------------------

It is typical in internet discussions of patents for participants to focus on things like the abstract or on things mentioned in the specification without realizing what it is that a patent actually covers.

[armstrong]

I had to go through that several times to really understand, but in plain english the patent (at least in claim 1) is about retrieving content based on the subdomain, so for example typing in latestnews.domain.com will display different info as oldnews.domain.com.

[jberryhill]

It's about more than that. It is about having a separate wildcard handler for domains which do not have their own DNS entries, which will route http requests for existing domains.

For example, you run example.com, and you have users able, baker, and charlie. One thing you might do is to set up DNS entries in example.com for able.example.com, baker.example.com and charlie.example.com.

Another thing you might do - the thing they appear to be driving at in this claim - is to simply wildcard the third-level domains above example.com, route all http requests for third-level domains to a designated address, and have that server configured to provide the content for able, baker, or charlie, based on the address specified in the http request. That way, if you have a dynamic user base, you don't have to be constantly messing with your DNS table for example.com.

Is that "a patent on subdomains"? No.

Now, I haven't looked at the other independent claim, nor have I considered the prosecution history of the patent at the USPTO, among other things that can be relevant considerations in considering the scope and/or validity of this patent. However, claim 1 at least, appears to be trivially avoidable.

[theparrot]

Ok, so the patent is really an attempt to patent name based virtual hosting then? I had a todo list in April 12th , 1998 saying to add this feature into the CERN server, I never did as we switched servers instead, but this means servers existed that used this and the idea was in use prior to this date.

[jberryhill]

"this means servers existed that used this and the idea was in use prior to this date"

Again, without reviewing the prosecution history of the patent, and the other claims, it is not always apparent whether the interpretation of the claims might be further limited by nuances that are not apparent at first blush.

An issued patent is entitled to a presumption of validity. This presumption can be overcome by the presentation of clear and convincing evidence that the subject matter of the claim at issue is shown in the prior art. And, by "shown", I mean shown - i.e. in black and white by a relevant form of evidence. So, what is relevant:

35 U.S.C. 102 establishes the novelty conditions for a US patent. Some of these are indeterminate on information objectively available at this point, since they refer to the "date of invention" of the subject matter. The "date of invention" is, of course, not known from information available in the patent. The sorts of things which matter, in a preliminary consideration of validity are the conditions of section 102(b), i.e. whether -

"the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States."

CERN is in Switzerland, so public use or sale there is irrelevant, and your todo list is not a publication. Next?

[theparrot]

ok, CERN was the orginal web server, and was indeed available and in use in the United States, my old todo list reference was for me to refresh my memory on the data/time named based hosting was being implimented in general use. The fact it is on my todo list then, means it was already in other servers such as thttpd and apache by that date and in wide us in the USA.

I guess I am just trying to make the case, as a resonable knowledge practicioner in the field around the time of the patent application, this seemed to be well known knowledge so should not have been patenable in my laymans understanding of requirements for patents. In addition is seems to have had prior art. Which means I think it is fightable, but then the patent system is not logical in the view of many computer programmers.

[theparrot]

I guess that presumtion of validity for a patent, and the lack of real domain knowledge by the patent office , combined with soverign immunity (they are not able to be held libable for the pain caused by bad patents) is a core problem with the system.