Patent describes a separate “cache” pool for expired domains.
The current method of drop catching domain names — throwing as many registrar add commands at the registry as possible — hasn’t changed. But that doesn’t mean the world’s largest domain name registry isn’t thinking of ways to change the system.
It has a patent for selling pools of drop-catching access to registrars. It has designed systems to detect registrar collusion. And it has even contemplated a system that sells “encoding domains” to reserve expired domains.
Here’s another.
Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent number 11,411,913 (pdf) to Verisign for System and method for domain name registration using a cache.
The patent describes a system where drops occur in an initial cached environment separate from the main system that registries use to add domains. Drops would have a time delay before they become available in the regular system to prevent registrars from also trying to get domains in the regular system.
Essentially, it’s a way to offload drop-catching activity so it doesn’t interfere with people trying to register a domain that isn’t dropping.
Verisign applied for the patent in 2017.
hidden in the diagram….. Someone called attention to me to look at that bottom box, where there would be “premium domain” flagging noted within the metadata, and they asked me if we are seeing evidence of a frog boil change that starts us entering into a world where premium (tier or otherwise) pricing is creeping in to replace the TLD-wide flat pricing in legacy TLDs? It is likely that this patent is for covering TLDs other than COM/NET, but I didn’t know that to be my 100% confident answer in response.
I wouldn’t read too much into it. The patent mentions .tv, which they managed at the time. That includes premiums
all of this basically because huge domains and dropcatch are warehousing domains by the millions and have basically takenover the entire drop process. These vulture registrys and drop catch auction houses combined with Verisign’s price hikes at a time when the economy is in a deep recession, have practicly killed the industry by driving up prices until no one wants to be in the business anymore. After 20+ years I am planning on getting out in the next couple of months. The greed in the domain industry is just out of control. Most of these companies are not even businesses, they are vultures preying off a near dead industry that has been killed by greed. And look in less than a month another .com price hike to celebrate. Yay!!