GoDaddy Receives Patent On 'Announcing A Domain Name Registration On A Social Website'

by Mike Masnick

Another day, another crazy patent. DomainNameWire has the story that GoDaddy has successfully received a patent on "Announcing a domain name registration on a social website." The patent, 8,276,057, was filed back in September of 2009. Take a look at the claims for yourself to understand exactly what's being claimed, but reading through them, I'm at a complete loss as to how this is considered worthy of a patent. It has been common practice that after you do something online that options be presented to allow that action to be posted to a social networking site. It's done so often that I actually find it kind of annoying these days. But basically any programmer could implement variations on that, and nothing in what GoDaddy describes appears to be anything unique or special or out of the ordinary. Thankfully, with StackExchange's new prior art crowdsourcing effort, folks are already finding prior art. Unfortunately, that effort is supposed to be for patent applications... and this patent has already been approved for reasons that defy any logic.