Patents for Domain Title and Fast Transfer — GoDaddy files
Firm wants patents for verifying a domain’s title history and for its Fast Transfer system.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published two patent applications today that were filed by GoDaddy.
The first is for a way to determine title of a domain name and the likelihood that it has a bad title, either due to theft or ongoing disputes.
Application number 14/522467 (pdf) describes a system that evaluates the history of a domain name to determine if it has a clean title. For example:
The domain history software may use this historical data to determine any breaks in the chain of title by, for example: 1) comparing the domain registration dates with the domain with the domain expiration dates and identifying non-sequential periods where the next registration date does not immediately follow the previous expiration date; 2) ambiguities in which registrant controls the domain name (e.g., since of privacy services, such as GODADDY’s DOMAINS BY PROXY, or a listed domain name registrant with a history of dishonest domain registration activity); 3) inactive status indicating periods of inactivity; and/or 4) changes in an email address as an access credential for the transfer codes and/or authorization for domain name administration.
The system could also look for unresolved domain disputes (such as a UDRP) and crawl the content of a site to see if it might have been seized by a government agency since of illegal activity.
GoDaddy’s patent application explains that this service could be used to review domain names being offered for sale on the aftermarket.
GoDaddy policy wonk James Bladel is listed as the inventor.
The second application, 14/824804 (pdf), is a continuation of previous GoDaddy patent applications. It describes Afternic’s system of automatic fast transfer between a seller and buyer when a domain name is transacted through its aftermarket platform. (Sedo has a similar system.)
This application is similar to two others just published, 14/805378 for “Losing registrar selling a domain name for a seller” and 14/805374 for “gaining registrar purchasing a domain name for a buyer”.
Sarah Ptalis, Paul Nicks, Frank Taylor (first application) and Mark Haseltine (latter two applications) are listed as the inventors.
