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EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 15, 2007 Contact: Jason Schultz Senior Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation jason@eff.org +1 415 436-9333 x112 Rick Mc Leod Klarquist Sparkman, LLP rick.mcleod@klarquist.com +1 503 595-5300 x2317 EFF Wins Reexamination of Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent Fourth Successful Challenge from EFF's Patent-Busting Project San Francisco - San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) of a bogus patent on Internet subdomains -- the fourth successful reexamination request from EFF's Patent Busting Project. The patent, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claims to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like "action.eff.org" for the parent domain "eff.org." Previous patent owner Ideaflood used this illegitimate patent to demand payment from website hosting companies that offer such personalized domains, including Freehomepage.com, T35 Hosting, and LiveJournal, a social networking site where each of its three million users have their own subdomain. In the reexamination request, EFF and Rick Mc Leod of Klarquist Sparkman, LLP, showed that the method Ideaflood claimed to have invented was well known before the patent was issued. In fact, website developers were having public discussions about how to create these virtual subdomains on an Apache developer mailing list for more than a year before Ideaflood made its patent claim. The open source developers established a public record of the technology development, providing the linchpin to EFF's patent challenge. "The hard work of open source developers should not be taken out of the public domain and used to threaten other legitimate innovators," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jason Schultz, who heads EFF's Patent Busting Project. "Fortunately, the open source approach to development helped protect Apache and other web projects by creating the evidence needed to challenge this illegitimate patent." The challenge to the Ideaflood patent is part of EFF's Patent Busting Project, which combats the chilling effects that bad patents have on public and consumer interests. So far, the project has killed one bogus patent and won reexamination of three others. "Based on the PTO's initial analysis in the reexamination order, it appears likely that all claims will be rejected in view of the techniques disclosed by Apache developer Ralf Engelschall and others," said Rick Mc Cloud, who drafted EFF petition. "We look forward to the PTO's detailed analysis of our request." For the full reexamination order: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/ideaflood/re-exam_order.pdf For more on EFF's Patent Busting Project: http://www.eff.org/patent For this release: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/15 About EFF The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/ -end- _______________________________________________ presslist mailing list https://falcon.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/presslist (Log in to post comments)
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 1:19 UTC (Fri) by squidgit (subscriber, #42190) [Link] +1 for common sense, thank $(DEITY) I always love it when being open source actually _defends_ your IP. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 5:53 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] You could probably bust a hundred or more bogus Internet and web-related software patents just with the archive of the old www-talk mailing list from 1993-1995 or so.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 7:20 UTC (Fri) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link] we shouldnt have to, though.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 11:10 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link] Just a shame that this is so low-key - it seams like a worthy but symbolic gesture. Doing this with the mpeg patents (or at least publicly collecting prior art for them) might make more people take note.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 16:13 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] Do you think there's a likelihood of success with MPEG ? My impression is that the breadth and depth of the patents in that portfolio is quite substantial. Having just one of those patents struck doesn't change anything except perhaps the way your money is distributed between the members of the licensing organisation. So it's either a token project or you have to collect solid prior art for every aspect that's patented. I think this is unlikely. The biggest difference as I understand it though is that some of the essential work to develop MPEG was done by the owners of the patents, indeed part of the process was to obtain the agreement that all the relevant patents would be licensed on RAND terms (which was the most you could have expected at that time). In contrast the owner of this "sub-domain" patent simply patented an idea other people were already using, and which was obvious to anyone with relevant knowledge. So this is a fight we can expect to win.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 16, 2007 16:31 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link] Probably not indeed. It would be really interesting though if someone tried to collect as much prior art as possible on a public website. I have heard claims that prior art exists for all of the mpeg patents, and would be interested to know whether that is really the case.
EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent Posted Nov 17, 2007 4:18 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Sure, there's prior art that's likely to affect some of the patents. But you'd have to bust every claim of every patent, and that's unlikely to succeed.
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