Amazon.com Gets Patent for Selling and Leasing Domain Names

Amazon granted patent for domain name marketplace.

Amazon.com subsidiary Amazon Technologies, Inc. was today granted U.S. patent number 7,805,379 for “Method and system for leasing or purchasing domain names”.

This patent, which was applied for in December 2007, seems to conflict with a number of existing domain name marketplace and domain monetization technologies that were commercially available at the time the patent application was filed.

One conflict in particular is Sendori, which offers a bidded marketplace to “lease” traffic that goes to a particular domain name. The leasing system described in Amazon’s patent would allow someone to go to a marketplace and lease a fraction or all of the traffic to a domain name. The marketplace would then split the traffic accordingly through a redirect. However, Amazon’s method may lease a percentage of traffic for a set period of time rather than on a per-visitor basis.

The marketplace could also offer domain names for sale and may also include some sort of valuation technology. You can read the full patent here (pdf). Abstract:

A method and system are described that enables a domain name owner (i.e., a “lessor”) to grant a third party (i.e., a “lessee”) a lease to any domain name the lessor owns. More specifically, a lessor may use a domain name service to allow a third party (i.e., a “lessee”) to lease a domain name for use or to purchase the domain name outright. More specifically, the lessor may lease a domain name to the lessee so that any user who accesses the leased domain name is redirected to a network resource identified by the lessee. The lessee may also be provided the option to purchase the domain name outright from the lessor, rather than lease it.

http://domainnamewire.com/2010/09/28/amazon-com-gets-patent-for-selling-and-leasing-domain-names/