From Geek.com: posted 8:43am EST Tue Jan 20 2004 - submitted by J. Eric
Smith

Do you know about United States Patent No. 6,671,714? You should. The
patent, recently granted to one Frank Weyer of Beverly Hills, California,
grants the patent holder full rights to:A method for assigning URL's and
e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of: assigning
each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and
assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form
"[log in to unmask];"

Sound familiar? Well, it should, because the patent describes what is
essentially one of the most basic, most crucial underlying structures of the
World Wide Web, namely the domain naming system.

The concept of domains and subdomains, as well as the e-mail addresses
associated with them, has been around for a long time but apparently has
escaped being patented prior to now. Meyer, a lawyer by trade, has
capitalized on that oversight, and as of December 30, 2003, Meyer owns it.
And now he's using it where it'll do the most good--in court.
...
Oh brother.  The rest at:
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Jan/gee20040120023507.htm or
http://tinyurl.com/yve46

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