Patent for AuthCode-less domain name transfers — GoDaddy gets
Process would eliminate pesky AuthCodes in favor of registrant data verification.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent number 10,581,799 (pdf) to GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) today for “Method for a losing registrar to transfer a domain name from the losing registrar to a gaining registrar.”
The patent describes a way for people to transfer domain names to a fresh (winning) registrar without logging in to the old (losing) registrar’s account. In effect, it eliminates those pesky authorization codes.
Right now, ahead of transferring a domain name, a client needs to log into their account at the losing registrar to request an authorization code. They then must provide this authorization code to the winning registrar.
Under the proposed system, the winning registrar would verify the owner’s information instead of getting the authorization code. To do this, the winning registrar would validate the information in Whois, perhaps by sending a verification to the email address and an SMS verification to the phone number in Whois. The patent application was filed just following GDPR went into effect and contemplated access to Whois. An alternative to Whois is for the winning registrar to ping the losing registrar, which would provide the contact information that needs to be validated.
This might sound familiar. In the old days, transfers were predicated on sending an email to the contact in Whois. It’s a similar concept.
The process would not override transfer locks, so registrants would need to log in at the losing domain name registrar to remove these if they are in place.
