The US Patent
and Trademark Office rejected a patent that had the potential to stuff
up the world wide wibble completely.
The PTO has ruled that the idea
behind how to manage subdomains ordomains hosted within larger domains are
too obvious to patent. The PTO rejected all 20 patent claims over Internet
subdomains held by an outfit called Hoshiko.
IdeaFlood was granted
the patent for subdomain names in 2004. It used it to threaten
companies like LiveJournal, which hosts more than 3 million
personalized subdomains for its users. It also threatened Freehomepage.com
and T35 Hosting.
The patent rights were transferred to Hoshiko and that
company now has two months to try to narrow its patent claims to make them
more reasonable or convince the PTO to reverse its January 15 ruling.
More
here.