"Third Level" domains not patented

Fri Jan 16 16:26:39 UTC 2004

>Uh, no, that's not what the article said and it's not what the patent,
>which is linked from the article, says.  The patent is on the tiny
>tweak of selling matching e-mail addresses and domains (it says URLs
>but their examples show domains) of the form argle at bargle.tld and
>argle.bargle.tld.

I'm sure there is prior art from the discussions in 1996
but I can't remember enough details to dig that up. However
here is something from 2 Jan 1997 that is clearly prior
art for the selling personal domain names to people in
the form first.last.something.

http://listes.cru.fr/wws/arc/isoc.nommage/1997-01/msg00017.html

Pass it on to anyone else who may be interested.

--Michael Dillon