Go Daddy Sued for Sending Domain Renewal Notices
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
Does sending renewal reminders violate patents?
This isn’t meant to be a shock headline. It’s true.
WhitServe LLC has filed a patent infringement lawsuit (pdf) against GoDaddy.com based on the renewal notices it sends to customers. WhitServe says the method by which Go Daddy sends these notices and allows customers to renew their expiring domain names violates two of its patents:
-US Patent 5,895,468 for System Automating Delivery Of Professional Services
-US Patent 6,182,078 for System For Delivering Professional Services Over The Internet
WhitServe has sued numerous other companies over the same patents.
While Go Daddy itself has filed a number of patents that may seem a bit questionable, I’m not aware of any time it has tried to enforce them — except against a company that had sued it over other patents.
By the way, I own PatentTroll.com and PatentTrolls.com.
Someone should be suing Domain Registry Of Canada. They send out mail to other registrar customers with renewal prices high as $50-60. I got 5 mail from them so far.
Bob Parson seems like the type of person who will fight this no matter how nominal the licensing fee being requested is. The fact that other large companies have licensed the patents doesn’t mean much as they might have just weighed the cost vs. legal fees. etc.
As far as droc/droa they have been cited as follows:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm
Intellectual property lawyers have made similar complaints about the aggressive enforcement of trademarks.
BTW, I will sell you CopyrightTroll.com to add to your fine collection.
Jorge, I think Righthaven is your buyer
I have just managed to Patent “Breathing Oxygen using an organ contained in my body” . Please everyone,refrain from ……erm breathing.