Patent covers bulk checking and registration of country code top level domains.
Verisign has been granted U.S. patent number 8,356,081 for “Automated Domain Name Registration”.
This patent, applied for in 2005, is a divisional patent of 7,000,028, which was filed back in 2000.
Which will take you down memory lane…
The genesis of this patent is actually idNames, a company founded by Pinky Brand and Marc Ostrofsky. Network Solutions bought the company in 1998. Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign in 2000 (and sold three years later).
Although it’s not clear in the patent title, the invention is related to the registration of idNames’ bread-and-butter of country code top level domains.
It covers near-real-time bulk checking of availability of ccTLDs coupled with automated registration of these domain names. Basically it gets fast availability information and then automatically formats the necessary information for each ccTLD registration as required by the registries.
You can read the patent here (pdf).
Is it checking IANA’s ccNSO authorized ccTLD’s?
Or, is it checking those cc.COM’s of False designations of origin, false descriptions, and dilution forbidden. Under, United States Code Title 15, Chapter 22, Sub-Chapter III, Section 1125 §1125.
Those being the Sub-Domain Names, not TLD’s, that VeriSign “accommodate” sold retail, care of CentralNic?
Just curious.
Cheers, Graham.
The patent is what is says it is. It brings back quite a few memories for sure!
Way back in 1996 when we started idNames it was quite difficult to determine the availability, or actually the *unavailability* of a domain name in many ccTLDs, and to this very day there are different rules and regulations and policies across the ccTLDs, making it difficult for one to simply register across multiples in one go.
One can only imagine potential difficulty to register across many of the new gTLDs yet to be approved, if any of them require data or information in a format that might not be standard across multiple back-end registry providers, etc. All in all with the new gTLDs I think it will be easier than what has been experienced with many ccTLDs–and this will cause issues for ccTLDs if they don’t harmonize registration data requirements in some meaningful way.