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EFF busts bogus Internet subdomain patent

EFF busts bogus Internet subdomain patent
[Announcements] Posted Jun 17, 2009 15:28 UTC (Wed) by cook

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the winning of a case against a bogus patent. "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will revoke an illegitimate patent on Internet subdomains as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Patent Busting Project campaign. U.S. Patent No. 6,687,746, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claimed 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 bogus patent to demand payment from website hosting companies offering personalized domains, such as LiveJournal, a social networking site where each of its three million users may have their own subdomain."

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