Network Solutions was just awarded this patent yesterday and despite reading it 10 times I can understand exactly what is so proprietary about it. Can anyone explain this in a way that I can understand?
ESDR Network Solutions Assigned Patent
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 13 — ESDR Network Solutions, Wilmington, Del., has been assigned a patent (8,037,168) developed by Eric Schneider, University Heights, Ohio, for a “method, product, and apparatus for enhancing resolution services, registration services, and search services.”
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A WHOIS record of a domain name is retrieved at a first time, the WHOIS record including an expiry date of a second time, a time difference value can be calculated between the first time and the second time, and the time difference value provided to a user. Time difference value can be determined to satisfy at least one condition including a threshold value. An indication can be provided to the user that the at least one condition has been satisfied such as notifying the user of domain name expiration status, storing the domain name in a user expiration watch list, monitoring the domain name for expiration upon or after the second time, and attempting to register the domain name with a selected domain name registration provider after the second time or upon determining that either the domain name may soon be available for registration or available for registration. The WHOIS record can be retrieved in response to receiving or obtaining a request such as a resource location request, domain name resolution request, search engine request, WHOIS request, domain name availability request, and domain name registration request.”
The patent application was filed on Dec. 6, 2004 (10/904,943). The full-text of the patent can be found at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=80,37,168&OS=80,37,168&RS=80,37,168
As far i understand, it seems to be something related to renewal of domains automatically through the registrar that the user chooses, if a user adds the domain to their monitoring list.It calculates the difference between expiration date & alerts the user abt the renewal date.
This is what i could infer from that patent.Im not sure if my thoughts above are right!
They could have tried to simplify the words making it easy to understand.