Go Daddy patents “announcing a domain name registration on a social website” | Hacker News Reader

Go Daddy patents “announcing a domain name registration on a social website”

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131 pointsxhrpost73 comments

For what it's worth, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. If you want to read the arguments, enter the patent number 8276057 at this website:

http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair

Look under the heading "file wrapper" for all the communication. In particular, read:

	 CTNF	Non-Final Rejection
	 REM	Applicant Arguments/Remarks Made in an Amendment
	 NPL	Non Patent Literature
         NOA	Notice of Allowance and Fees Due (PTOL-85)

The initial rejection (CTNF) is followed by applicant rebuttal (REM), several prior-art searchs (NPL) and then the acceptance (NOA, first document with 6 pages).

I'm not bored enough to read the whole thing, but the claims seem to have been some constrained on very technical points.

Please note: this patent is completely bogus, and I am not defending it. I am pointing this out because I think it is critically important for people to understand how the process works. Otherwise all this hand-wringing is for naught (and those who don't learn from history, etc...)

A suggestion for an enterprising web designer who happens to also be a bored 2L: make a website to semi-automate collation of prior art challenges. Court is not the only way to challege a patent. Patents can be challenged by 3rd parties through an "ex-parte re-examination request". One of the big limitations to this is the cost of the legal process and prior-art search/summation. I'm dreaming of a website that would allow crowd-sourcing to get 95% of the way to a ready-to-file submission, which could then be vetted and finalized by pro-bono lawyers, students in legal clinic, etc.

For those who haven't seen it:

http://patents.stackexchange.com/

(This is the same as askpatents.com)

And a link to a question specifically pertaining to this patent:

http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/535/prior-art-for...

Someone should post this on AskPatents.com, to make sure the Patent Office sees it, or is it too late for that already?

The patent is valid as of the issue date. A re-examination request can be filed at any time during the life of the patent.

I haven't yet heard what, if any, formal relationship AskPatents.com will have to the examination process going forward. However, at least for an already-issued patent a re-exam would be required.

From my understanding the director of the patent office David Kappos, was the one that asked the people at stack exchange to make this site. I suppose they indeed haven't given any further details of how they will interact, but I don't see him taking this initiative without intending to bring to the attention of his office the patent questions which receive the highest votes. (seeing that is how stack exchange works anyways.)

The promotion by the director is a great sign, and I can see AskPatents being very useful for prior-art searches (one of the results of which is the NPL document referenced above). It will hopefully improve results and save money.

Absent some statutory changes, it's hard to see how it will impact the prescribed, formal steps of the patent review process. Patent filings are a lot more complicated [edit: as compared to existing legal forms websites], but I can imagine a template interface that would allow crowd-sourcing before a final review to cross the Ts and dot the Is.

It would be phenomenal if the PTO streamlined the process themselves. Baby steps...

I just noticed this answer, which gives an overview of how to officially provide prior art for a pending patent application:

http://meta.patents.stackexchange.com/questions/105/i-want-t...

This is really neat!

I wonder if it would be possible to collect some prior art, then call up a patent holder and shake him down for a little "settlement" to keep you from filing the re-exam.

Its like trolling backwards.

No.

GoDaddy titles a patent "Announcing a Domain Name Registration on a Social Website"

Regardless of your position on US copyright law, you simply must understand this important and not-so-subtle distinction before you make arguments about the validity of a patent. There are 18 claims in this patent. Read and complain about specific claims.

To choose a random example, patent US496217 by Stihl (1990) is titled "Handle for a chain saw", yet Stihl did not patent handles on chain saws.

"Handle for a chain saw" patents are usually described with language precise enough they can't do that.

"Method and apparatus for lifting and operating a chain saw" would be more akin to the useless software patents that are out there.

Wow! What an innovation. I would never have thought of doing this. Its a shame I won't be able to do this myself now.

Hang on? Isn't everyone already doing this for just about every other online venture? Someone registered via Facebook -> Post to wall. Hmmm. Maybe I should copy and paste their patent application and switch out "domain name registration" for any other service name.

I think it is silly for 2 reason's. Firstly this is not an innovation in any shape or form. People have been doing this for years with everything. It shouldn't have been approved. Secondly, GoDaddy have spent time and money gaining a patent which they can't enforce. Seems silly. I feel they just wanted to add "using patented technology" in their advertising.

You seem certain that "everyone already doing this" is doing it in the way specified in the claims. Are you?

Patent trolls have had open season on engineers because the lawmakers and moneymen don't listen to us.

Going after marketers, however, will be their undoing.

The patent system is like a bug in a software that all your clients rely upon and will never let you fix. I expect peace in the middle east to happen before the patent system gets scrapped.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic. I've seen more and more attention to this in mainstream discussions. Some things just take a little longer to build momentum...

There's still a huge valid question about reform as opposed to scrap. The system would work if it was actually applied correctly. (I understand application is part of said system, but I'm referring to the overall human aspect, ie, the reason AskPatents.com was made.)

I understand why this is downmodded -- software patents as a whole are pretty awful. And I think we can just about all agree that the patent office is incapable of sifting through requests on its own.

But askpatents.com looks to me like it has some potential to work, and if it did, it might solve at least most of the really heinous examples. I'd say that at least merits making the possibility of reform an open question.

Forcing a massive shift in IP rights (that may not benefit large, entrenched interest) through Congress is an enormous undertaking that may not succeed. Reform may be a more practical option.

Even scarier is their definition of social network. From the patent document:

"Social networking websites may comprise internet-based social networking services that focus on building and verifying online social networks for communities of people who may share interests and activities, wish to communicate with each other efficiently, and may be interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software applications".

In addition to Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn and Facebook they also list YouTube and Flickr as specific examples. This thing is pretty far reaching.

IRC, Email?

This is silly. They should have patented "announcing something on the internet"

on the internet.. using a mobile device!

In gmail, I filter every email from GoDaddy and apply label "change registrar", just so I'll remember when my domains expire. I'm not really liking most things I see from GoDaddy; perhaps with the exception of pricing.

Most of the registrars top up the time your domain has with the current registrar at the point of transfer. At least Namcheap does.

Be aware of the following 60-day restriction when planning the transfer from GoDaddy: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3560/transferring-do...

All com/net/org/info registrars do that -- it's an inherent feature of the registry.

That's actually not the case. Godaddy implements this locally, and arguably in contravention of the ICANN policy.

oBDisclaimer: I participated in the development of the original and amended ICANN transfer policy. I understand that there has been a subsequent amendment and I'm just not interested enough anymore to find out what it includes. You may in fact actually be correct in that ICANN now permits this, although I'm pretty sure that this isn't the case :-)

They should patent "Getting Away With Outrageous Misogyny In A Business That Would Seem Inhospitable For It"; that's their true and only talent.

but there is so much prior art for that!

I'd love it if the clerk(s) in question could explain how it isn't "obvious to a person 'skilled in the relevant art' applying reasonable diligence and effort."

One thing these characters could patent is a system and method of auto renewing and parking a domain they host if their site is used to check on it as it approaches expiry. I give GoDaddy a wide berth.

Be careful what you wish for.

There are pretty well established guidelines for determining the "obviousness" of a patent, and one of these (as you mention) is determining whether the patent would be obvious to one with an ordinary level of skill in the relevant art.

The average software developer can't code fizzbuzz. Therefore anything more sophisticated than fizzbuzz is potentially patentable.

Think about that. Really let it sink in.

I have come to believe that the problem isn't with software patents, the problem is with us. Most software developers really are that bad. It is easy to forget this, but the people who hang out on Hacker News are really a slim minority.

We need to get our own house in order and demand more of the people who practice this art. Other industries have professional certification or restrictive guild systems - maybe we need to adopt the same.

Damn I need to move that last domain off of Go Daddy. Ill do that today.

Just started my own transfer for one of my domains; I might let the other one lapse.

This was the last kick in the pants I needed to get off of GoDaddy.

I could expect this out of Go Daddy, but should the people approving this patent also be blamed?

I guess you could try blaming the rubber-stamping machine they're clearly running these applications through, sure.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea of what sorts of software patent applications have not been approved?

I heard they determined The Singularity was not innovative enough.

Maybe someone here can patent the act of making trivial, over-reaching patents and put a stop to all this?

Too much prior art.

I have JUST patented announcing the patent of announcing a domain name registration on a social website...

You all owe me £1m each ... (I also patented talking about it).

Genius, however, I had already patented getting a patent on patenting the announcing of a domain name registration on a social website.

times infinity...

Guys, this isn't reddit.

Edit: Or Slashdot.

Thanks for letting us know. My browser's location bar is a blur.

Yeah I wouldn't normally post something that ridiculous, but given the state of the patent system, it seemed worth mocking.

Software patents with troll owners have long been the Sword of Damocles for the bootstrapped startup. This one is probably of no consequence but overall they represent a barrier to entry that has no basis in natural law. I really doubt we'll ever see meaningful reform because those who could effect a change don't have a clue about the technology their laws affect.

The patent's claims are slightly more specific than the title would suggest, but are still absurdly broad. The patent appears to cover announcing, after a delay, a domain name registration on a social website using oauth.

So, say I buy a domain from Register.com and then manually post it on my Facebook that I bought this, that isn't Register.com's fault right?

This seems pointless because you could still just encourage people to do it manually, in another part of the purchase flow, or maybe even a week or two after? It seems to me that the patent just blocks you from having an official Facebook share button or Tweet (or something like that) button on the checkout summary page.

But what are you doing buying from Register.com? Yeesh.

...that was just the first competitor example I could think of, I don't actually purchase my domains from there! :P Haha

On this basis:

A photo-sharing service can patent "announcing a picture upload on a social website". A location service can patent "announcing a check-in on a social website" A restaurant review service can patent "announcing a restaurant rating on a social website"

It might actually help more such "ridiculous" patents being granted. Eventually, the non-tech crowd will be affected and the whole system will be brought into question.

But that's just a small part of what the sites are doing these days, such as providing free renewal for the second year in case a user allows connecting its Facebook Account, and granting permission to the site to publish any promotion post on the wall of the user(which can be anything more than saying that user has registered an 'example.com' domain name on register.com).

They should have gone for a wider range of things.

This is just ridiculous. Where does it stop?

And after reading articles like these - http://www.law.com/corporatecounsel/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202... - makes one feel the legal system is aware how outdated and broken it is.

How is this patentable? Isn't this just API stuff?

Almost everything is patentable. The real test is holding the patent up in court.

A test I expect this will fail. Fairly sure there's some prior art for this.

I guess going by the apple-samsung lawsuit, getting your patent validated in court seems to depend a lot on random chance as well.

>The real test is holding the patent up in court.

Or threatening enough people to sue them for umpteen fantastillion dollars unless they pay you ransom money^W^W licensing fees.

Remind me why we still have this fucked up system?

I assume this will only apply to companies in the US. Unless your name is Kim dotcom

I don't think this "service" will even be successful. Domainers certainly don't want to share their business matters with their Facebook friends. And business owners may spend several months developing a site before publishing it. No timer can predict when the site is done.

Yeah, but imagine the lay user buying a domain and letting their friends know about it. Then everyone else is like, "Wow, you got your own dot com!"... "Me three".

And so Godaddy makes money.

In addition to requiring a delay, the patent claims as allowed require that you GIVE GODADDY your credentials to the social networking site and that their server will use the credentials to log you in. Contrary to what some of you are saying, this is not oath.

Hm. Another fairly bogus patent, but who exactly is going to use it anyway? Even if you had the site already prepared and developed... CNAME and other DNS jazz takes a day to propagate anyway. You'd end up announcing something that wasn't there.

This is genius, announcing registrations on Facebook. I have never seen such a thing.

How can it be for real? Not surprising tho since the structure of the legal system and the law as it currently is just cannot keep up with technological progress.

I will patent announcing patents on social websites.

Good to see Godaddy focusing on their core business and keeping secure, reachable and reliable instead of useless fringe projects.

I'm surprised this was not patented already.

You have got to be kidding!

RIP Patent System...

They are going to be patenting sandwiches next!

if some politician would get rid of "business process patents", we would be 90% of the way there.

I was under the impression that those already didn't qualify for patents. At least, this is what my friend told me years ago when he was either in or had recently graduated from law school at UT.

Is that not the case?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_method_patent

Do a patent office search for "system and method" and you will discover that they certainly do qualify. There was a period where they did not, but then some appellate court suddenly decided they do and now you get what we have here.

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