Go Daddy files three patents for whois and DNS.
Go Daddy Group, Inc., parent company of domain name registrar GoDaddy, has filed three patents related to interactive and enhanced whois and DNS records. The three applications were published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday.
The applications cover various aspects of how to add additional information to whois and DNS records, such as information about whether the domain name is for sale and comments about the domain owner’s business (e.g., hours of operation or product listings). The additional information could be collected through various entities and in several different ways, such as through information stored at a web site. It could also allow for various queries to be made of the whois record’s owner, effectively making whois and DNS records interactive.
Copies of patent applications (pdf):
Interactive DNS for Non-Controlling Party, USPTO application 20090240709
Interactive DNS for Controlling Party, USPTO application 20090240799
Interactive WHOIS, USPTO application 20090240835
You might want to submit this to Slashdot or other tech-oriented sites. My guess is that there are is a *lot* of prior art that would find these “inventions” either trivial or preceded by others doing the exact same things.
TXT records = trivial; people do all kinds of creative things with them. Search Google for “TXT record examples” (without the quotes)
As for enhanced WHOIS, Tucows and others have been doing this for ages, since the very beginning of competition in the registrar space. Do a WHOIS for one of my domains, say Leap.com, and you’ll see how I added info about VeriSignSucks.com. 🙂 I can do that interactively, via the Tucows interface.
Do a WHOIS of the domaintools.com domain name, and you’ll see some pretty ASCII art.
It sounds like what DomainTools does and one step further. It is collecting business data (from mutiple sources) about the owner of the domain and supplying it with the whois search.
(I just skimmed the application.)
I’m surprised that is patentable.
I’m not a lawyer nor knowledgeable about the innerworkings of how the internet functions.
But, I’ve often heard that every patent can be bypassed by improvements built from the initial common knowledge foundation.
???
DomainTools.com has been collecting all kinds of business data (Alexa ranks, compete.com ranks, Quantcast ranks, etc.) and putting it on their WHOIS results (web-based). As do NSI, and many others.
I understand the need to protect one’s inventions, but if they intended to use this as a “sword” that would be a bad thing. If it’s just to be used as a “shield”, that’s ok. I’ve only read them once, so perhaps I missed some “dazzling” thing that no one had ever thought or implemented before, but I only noticed things that were very obvious, and didn’t extend the “state of the art” in any manner. But, perhaps someone else sees something “new” that no one else hadn’t thought of or implemented before….
Actually, re-reading the WHOIS one, I do see something that might be considered “new”, i.e. on page 7, figure 10, there’s the “How much is this domain name?” . I’m guessing they’re turning WHOIS into Twitter or something, where other people can actually have chats back and forth, and whatever they send appears in WHOIS? Sheesh, I wouldn’t want that to appear in my WHOIS. If that’s the “invention” I would go back to the drawing board. I would think nearly everyone would prefer that those conversations take place via email, instead of broadcasting them to the world.
George – my reading was that queries could be sent back in forth through some mechanism. But it may just be that there will be canned questions that someone can respond to.
Domain Investor–GD’s a long, long way from being granted actual patents on this stuff; if they ever even get them (from the comments of others, it sounds like there’s little if anything new here).
These are merely patent applications; which have not been examined on the merits yet.
With the huge (100’s of 1,000’s of applications) backlog at the PTO, if these ever issue, it likely won’t be until at least sometime after 2012; possibly even 2014 or later.
Boycott GoDaddy for frivolous patent abuse.
GoDaddy publicity machine at work…
I wonder if godaddy will take responsibility for the accuracy of the information.
I find a whole bunch of this stuff posted about my own activities that is completely wrong.
If they start posting the wrong information and folks act on the incorrect info, ???
What will they post when contradictory info is available?
I am sure they will post a disclaimer in fine print that nobody will see but will they post according to who the info was obtained.
I see law suites in their future!
I guess some might find it easier if whois displays “how much is the domain name” part. trying to turn whois info into web 2.0
Well there are many other patent applications out there, so not a big deal if go daddy 😛