Company Claims Patent On Subdomains
from the stop-laughing,-they're-serious dept
I thought we'd already had our silly patent of the day story, but it appears I made that decision a bit too soon. Apparently, a number of web hosting firms have received legalgrams from a company that actually has the guts to claim they own a patent on the concept of assigning subdomains. That's right, if you dare to put up a domain at http://subdomain.myisp.com, they say you're violating their patent. Well, I hate to say it, but it looks like we're guilty right here at Techdirt. Of course, this also sounds like a similar patent we discussed back in January which focused on taking a subdomain and automatically assigning it an email address. How many of these ridiculous, innovation harming patents do we need before someone decides to reform the system?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]