VeriSign Gets Patent Related to Internationalized Domain Names

[jose]

Patent is for method of registering and using IDNs.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted U.S. patent number 7,774,432 to VeriSign for
Registering and using multilingual domain names. The patent application was a continuation of a 2001 application that was abandoned, and a provisional application from 2000. This particular application was filed in 2007.

http://domainnamewire.com/2010/08/10/verisign-gets-patent-related-to-internationalized-domain-names/

[NameYourself]

Interesting is this just for variants, or registration of IDNs in general? Would be curious what exactly they now have a patent for.

[Drewbert]

Just another attempt to patent the bleeding obvious.

[NameYourself]

I can't imagine anyone being able to patent "idns" in general though.. it already exists in many ccTLDs and even gTLDs.. what exactly does this protect, do they have exclusive rights in some method of registering them, or checking for variants, etc..?

[NameYourself]

On the flip-side it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for .com/.net idn investors if the patent gives them exclusive rights to something very vital to international names.. the fewer the options the greater the value, however I can't imagine anything so general would be granted.. just knowing how verisign operates though it is no surprise that they would try to monopolize as many things as possible, that goes back to the very founding of the company and the creation of the very first domain names when people manually had to submit a hand-written application to apply for the earliest of domains and the "ONLY" way to register any domain was through Verisign.. policies granting exclusivity is just the way they know.

[Rubber Duck]

On the flip-side it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for .com/.net idn investors if the patent gives them exclusive rights to something very vital to international names.. the fewer the options the greater the value, however I can't imagine anything so general would be granted.. just knowing how verisign operates though it is no surprise that they would try to monopolize as many things as possible, that goes back to the very founding of the company and the creation of the very first domain names when people manually had to submit a hand-written application to apply for the earliest of domains and the "ONLY" way to register any domain was through Verisign.. policies granting exclusivity is just the way they know.

Hmmm.. Maybe just defensive. If they get turned down then nobody else has a chance of getting a patent, which may just be the objective.

[blastfromthepast]

If I recall correctly, the reason Punycode was developed as xn-- rather than the bq-- code as was used before and in the testbed, was that someone had taken out a patent on it.

[Rubber Duck]

If I recall correctly, the reason Punycode was developed as xn-- rather than the bq-- code as was used before and in the testbed, was that someone had taken out a patent on it.

The previous system was called RACE. How the hell do patent Row and Column Encodement?

This is the most basic form of encodement, Punycode was adopted because it was technically superior. To see this you only have to make comparisons of the string lengths.

[Zebulon]

So what does Verisign now charge IDN owners for this 'patent' .

[blastfromthepast]

Punycode was adopted because a company called Walid basically filed a patent for the IETF's proposed scheme in 2001.


Patent flap slows multilingual domain name plan

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World, 03/26/01

MINNEAPOLIS - Intellectual property claims have blindsided the Internet Engineering Task Force and could derail the group's efforts to develop a common scheme for supporting foreign-language domain names across the Internet.

Creating communications protocols for internationalized domain names is one of the most significant efforts under way within the IETF, the Internet's premier standards-setting body. The IETF is under pressure from Internet users outside the U.S., who want domain names in their native languages instead of the English-language alternatives available today.

What people want is to buy domain names with words and phrases from the real world," says John Klensin, head of the IETF's Internet Architecture Board. "This is a very tough issue. . . . Internationalizing the domain name system is the most difficult challenge we have faced since we deployed the Internet Protocol."

Indeed, the task is so tricky that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the world's country code operators agreed to wait until the IETF's development work is complete before supporting foreign-language domain names.

However, the Internet user community may have to wait longer than it expected. The IETF's Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) working group recently discovered that an Ann Arbor, Mich., start-up named a patent on Jan. 30 that appears to cover many aspects of the technical solution developed by the working group.

This solution involves converting foreign language characters into Unicode, a computer industry standard, and then encoding them in U.S. ASCII for transmission over the Internet. It creates a presentation layer to display domain names to end users in their native languages. The advantage of this approach is that it requires no changes to the DNS protocol or existing DNS servers.

Walid filed paperwork with the IETF claiming that it will seek licensing fees "based on reciprocity" if this approach is adopted in the group's final standard.

IETF officials last week asked Walid to reconsider and instead license the patent for free to all interested parties. If not, the IETF will likely scrap this approach and start over, which could make Walid's patent worthless.

IDN working group chair Marc Blanchet says he expects to hear from Walid within a month. "There are some signs that Walid may change its [intellectual property] stance," Blanchet says. "But there is no chance that the IETF will move ahead and test this patent claim."

Walid competitors likely to test the claim include I-DNS.net and VeriSign, which is running a multilingual test bed in partnership with Walid.

……………etc…

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2001/0326patent.html

[Rubber Duck]

Well, I am humbled. I guess come pay day, I will owe Walid a case of champagne!

[Avtal]

Interesting is this just for variants, or registration of IDNs in general? Would be curious what exactly they now have a patent for.
I skimmed through the patent. My uninformed opinion is that it isn't worth very much. It describes a particular method for implementing IDNs. This method may have seemed plausible in 2000, when the patent application was first submitted, but it is of only historical interest now. IDNs today are implemented in a way that is not covered by the patent.

Or so it appears to me.

Avtal (opinionated, but not a lawyer, nor an IDN expert, nor in any way qualified to comment on this topic, really)

[domainguru]

Very few tech patents are worth much. Except to the lawyers of course :)

[sbe18]

I skimmed through it..

My take is that GoDaddy and Enom may file against it..

They have recommendation or choice engine patents.

s/

[jose]

Very few tech patents are worth much. Except to the lawyers of course :)

Exactement :)