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EFF busts bogus Internet subdomain patent

[Posted June 17, 2009 by cook]

From:  EFF Press <press-AT-eff.org>
To:  presslist-AT-eff.org
Subject:  EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent
Date:  Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:57:22 -0700
Message-ID:  <4A382352.2060103@eff.org>

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Contact:

Cindy Cohn
  Legal Director
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  cindy@eff.org
  +1 415 436-9333 x108 (office), +1 415 307-2148 (cell)

Rick Mc Leod
  Klarquist Sparkman, LLP
  rick.mcleod@klarquist.com
  +1 503 595-5300 x2317

EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent

Patent Busting Project Wins Another Victory for Developers
and Innovators

San Francisco - 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.

In the original 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 and on
Usenet more than a year before Ideaflood filed its patent
application.  The open source community's public record of
the technology development provided the linchpin to EFF's
patent challenge.

"In the reexam, the Patent Office systematically rejected
each of Hoshiko's arguments as well as the patent claims.
We were fortunate to have the Internet Archive and Usenet
Archive as proof of the prior work by the open source
community," said Rick Mc Leod, who drafted the EFF
petition.

"This patent was particularly troubling because the company
tried to remove the work of open source developers from the
public domain and use it to threaten others," said EFF
Legal Director Cindy Cohn.  "Ironically, the transparent
open source development process gave us the tools to bust
the 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.
This marks the second patent completely "busted" by the
project, which has also resulted in the narrowing of
another patent and the ongoing reexaminations of three
more.  Hoshiko can appeal the decision.

For the notice from the Patent Office:
http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/ideaflood/6687746_final_r...

For more on EFF's Patent Busting Project:
http://www.eff.org/patent

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/06/16

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-

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to post comments

Patent claims and fraud

Posted Jun 17, 2009 16:54 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (2 responses)

Of course, it would be best if patents like the one described were consigned to the dustbin, but with the "inventors" and/or patent trolls having nourished themselves through this invalid patent, potentially knowing that no act of "invention" (even by the ridiculously permissive standards of the patent regime in question) had taken place, due to prior public knowledge of the techniques upon which the patent was based, might it not be appropriate to consider the actions of the patent holders as fraudulent?

If someone were to request that you pay them a tax, claiming that they had the authority to demand that tax from you, and after having paid that tax you were to discover that that person had no such authority, would you not under any other circumstances be able to demand that they be prosecuted for fraud? With frivolous patents granted continuously (in areas where no patents should even be permitted) and with no disincentive for patent holders trying their luck, is it really a surprise that we see a parade of thinly veiled extortion attempts from one day to the next?

Patent claims and fraud

Posted Jun 17, 2009 16:57 UTC (Wed) by Requiem (guest, #51519) [Link]

Doing what they did is a felony, but the Patent office shut down its fraud department in the 70s, and there's no one to pursue the case.

Patent claims and fraud

Posted Jun 18, 2009 10:59 UTC (Thu) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]

But... those inventors can argue that they acted "on good faith", because they did not know their patent was bogus; then, it is not fraud but just incompetence (not a crime, unfortunately).

EFF busts bogus Internet subdomain patent

Posted Jun 18, 2009 11:08 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

FWIW, here's the ArsTechnica coverage of the story, which I got thru reading just before I switched to the LWN feed and saw this article:

Patent busters score win as a virtual subdomain patent revoked

Duncan


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