Domain name registry shows off its patent portfolio, but still won’t say how it plans to make money from it.
Verisign has created a website dedicated to its patents and released a whitepaper about its intellectual property – but still won’t say how it plans to monetize its IP portfolio.
Yesterday the company formally unveiled VerisignPatents.com, a sort of patent marking site that lists all of its patents.
For example, under the header “Domain Registry Services”, the company lists six patents that it claims protect its new gTLD services.
New Generic Top-level Domain (gTLD) Services
Verisign Product, New gTLD Services, are protected by the following U.S. Patent Nos.: 8,140,884; 8,327,019; 7,467,140; 8,090,693; 7,299,299; 8,527,945
The company also published a whitepaper titled Innovation + Initiatives that details “Verisign’s systematic approach to innovation and its extensive portfolio of intellectual property.”
On the company’s analyst conference call yesterday, one analyst asked if Verisign’s IP monetization plans just involved extracting royalties from competing registries. Verisign CEO James Bidzos responded “It’s more than that.”
Bidzos says the company is still evaluating its options for monetizing the IP. It will be interesting to see how aggressive the company is in going after competing registries, and how this might affect its future contract renewal for the .com namespace.
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