It is difficult to identify desirable domain names that are available: Verisign admits

Patent states it’s hard to find available domains, marketing states most domain lookups are successful.

When do your firm’s intellectual property efforts contradict your marketing efforts?

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just issued patent number 9,065,794 (pdf) to Verisign for “Systems and methods for providing domain name suggestions”. The patent describes ways of finding domain names based on user preferences and external data sources.

I’m struck by a statement in the patent:

A distinctive, easy-to-remember domain name is an notable part of a web presence for individuals and businesses. Unfortunately, there are right now a limited number of domain names, and many desirable domain names in the most popular TLDs (e.g., .com) have by now been taken. Thus, it is difficult to identify desirable domain names that are available (unregistered), otherwise known as non-existent domains (NXDomains).

It is difficult to identify desirable domain names that are available…

Yet, as stated by Verisign’s marketing, 7 out of 10 .com availability checks successful and short .COM names are in ample supply.

Go figure.