United States Patent: 6,671,714
Gaze in wonder at the stupidest patent I have seen in quite a while. I've been with pair.com since '95 or so. From the beginning, they've offered "vanity domains" of the form vanity.pair.com. In addition you've been able to form domains such as whatever.soletta.com since the very beginning.
This is a patent for that naming strategy. It was filed in 1999, many, many years after this technique was first used, publicly. Even the slightest level of real patent examination or search would have revealed this. The patent's owners are now vigorously suing various entities. They were stupid, though -- they're apparently going after the big guys first. This patent will be invalidated, and their initial victims have the resources to ensure that it will happen.
They should have gone after the little guys first, 'cause they don't have the resources to fight. But...isn't the patent system supposed to be in place to protect those little guys? Not any more, it isn't. The patent system is a pseudo-monopolistic mechanism used by lawyers and large companies to bludgeon away competition from small companies, or to extort from their earnings.
Litigation around patents creates inefficiencies in our economy; these are growing rather exponentially. We are shooting ourselves in the foot with these stupid IP laws. It has to stop, or we're going to lose yet another competitive advantage...
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Of course, patents were
Of course, patents were created to be a pseudo-monopolistic mechanism...
This idiocy probably should
This idiocy probably should have been filed under "unmitigated gall," because, well, it's unmitigatedly galling. The patent clause in the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" clearly does not imply to this case. If these people had invented it, fine, but Jebus - even someone with the smallest knowledge of the interweb would know that there was prior art for creating subdomains with that naming convention .
It gets to a more general thing that bothers me greatly - not enforcing the law correctly makes for arbitrariness and erodes the rule of law. If the patent office diligently checked patent applications, then the occasional slip-up would not have a great effect on the conduct of commerce in this country. But they let slip so many bad patents that it becomes yet another opportunity for the unscrupulous to exploit - usually on those who do not have the resources to fight back effectively.
I begin to think that not only should we have Tort reform, but we should throw out the entire legal code and start over with a simpler, better one.