Patent for Recovery of a Failed Registry — Verisign gets

Verisign adds to patent war chest.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Verisign patent number 8,656,209 for “Recovery of a Failed Registry”.

I wrote regarding the patent application in 2012.

Verisign describes the system as one that “enables a registry recovery service to retrieve zone files from a target registry, archive the zone files, publish the zone files to a managed DNS server, reconcile ownership of the zone files, and publish the zone files to a provisioning DNS server. The registry recovery service may also implement a WHOIS server for the zone and ownership information and may also implement zone specific features particular to the target registry’s TLD.”

It will be interesting to see what actually happens when some fresh TLD registries fail. Most will likely be absorbed by their existing back-end registry providers.

Verisign has told investors that it plans to begin “monetizing” its intellectual property. So far it hasn’t disclosed how it plans to do this.

Verisign Patent – Recovery of a failed registry