Patent for prioritizing cybersquatting cases — Yahoo gets

Patent covers discovering and prioritizing cybersquatting issues.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 8,499,032 (pdf) to Yahoo for a “System and method for compiling a set of domain names to recover”.

The invention, which I wrote regarding when the application was published in 2010, allows a trademark owner to generate a list of potentially infringing domain names. This list is run against network data to prioritize which domain names get the most traffic. If the trademark by now owns the domain but it doesn’t resolve, it can be flagged to add content to the domain.

If another party owns it, the invention helps determine if there any “aggravating factors” against the registrant, such as if the registrant is a known cybersquatter.

Jonathan Matkowsky, previously Yahoo’s Legal Director, Global Brand Protection, is the listed inventor. He has since left Yahoo and is in private practice.