An everlasting domain name registration?

Patent application describes a way to ensure enough income to renew a domain name long term.

You can’t register or renew a gTLD with the registry for more than ten years in advance. Why this policy is in place, I don’t know. But some people would like to secure their domains for much longer than ten years.

Network Solutions has offered a service for a 100-year registration, in which it maxes out the ten-year registration and then renews for another year each year.

Is there a better way? Two people in Dallas think so.

Kong Posh Bhat and Atul Vohra have filed a patent application for long-lasting domain name registrations powered by income-generating assets. (Establishing and maintaining a sustainable income stream to defray recurring services expenses in order to enable long-lasting domain registrations, application 20160225089 (pdf).)

The idea is akin to a financial instrument that throws off income each year to cover expenses. If you wanted to ensure your domain will be registered continuously for 100 years, you can calculate how much money you’d need to invest to cover annual renewal fees.

But it’s more complicated than that. Unlike a financial instrument that you want to create a set amount of distribution each year, the price of a domain name will change in the future.

The patent application accounts for this by estimating annual increases in the cost of domain registration and ICANN’s tax.

I certainly wouldn’t bet on how much a .com domain registration and ICANN’s fees will be 25 years from now, which is where I think the idea breaks down. It also seems like a complicated answer to a problem that isn’t all that pervasive.