Firm Gets Hands on “Domain Name Redirection” Patent — Patent Licensing

Firm purchases patent to license or sue.

Publicly traded Acacia, which some would call a patent troll, has purchased a patent “relating to domain name redirection technology”.

I reached out to the firm to find out the specific patent. But it turns out the firm’s short, uninformative press release regarding the buyout is all the firm will disclose.

When Acacia purchases patents it actually enters into a contingency agreement with the patent holder to share revenue from suing or licensing the patents.

Since of this arrangement it’s difficult to figure out exactly which patent is in play. I know Sendori has a couple patents related to redirecting domains for monetization. Verizon has a patent for “Mobile communication device domain name system redirection”. Yet this could also be related to forwarding domain names for all we know.

This sort of thing is the reason firms like Go Daddy build up a big patent portfolio — it gives them something to defends themselves with if they’re ever sued.

Stay tuned…