[ga] The Real $64,000 Question

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

Regarding the whole SnapNames patent discussion, I think the real $64,000
question involves what did Len Bayles disclose, if anything, in the public
domain prior to his employment at SnapNames.

As many on the list may know I served as an Snapnames Advisory Board member
from the Summer of 2000 until eariler this year when I stepped down. For
confidentiality reasons I will not discuss events that occured during my
tenurer as a SnapNames' Advisory Board member but I would like to shed some
light on what happened prior to the Summer of 2000.

Competition was introduced by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday, April
21, 1999. Len Bayles at the time was working at All West Communications one
of the first conditionally approved registrars. There were 29 registrars
that met ICANN's original criteria as a registrars but were not among the
first five selected to be part of ICANN's test-bed period.

As many may recall the test-bed period was extended something like five
times prior to its conclusion at the ICANN Regional meeting held in Los
Angeles in November. Prior to the conclusion of the test-bed in November,
ICANN and the DoC allowed some of the first 29 registrars plus others that
had been accredited post April 21, 1999 to move into the test-bed
environment. AllWest was one of the first handful of companies to do so. I
believe this happened in September of 1999 following the Santiago, Chile
meeting.

I have always been impressed with Len's technical knowledge. He clearly
demonstrated his knowledge of the intracies of VeriSign's (formerly NSI)
shared registry system (SRS) from the very beginning, and I consider him to
be one of the pioneers in the deleting domain name arena. In addition to his
work at AllWest, Len worked on the systems of other registrars. Len left
AllWest in the summer of 2000. After joining SnapNames he convinced me to
join SnapNames' Advisory Board of Directors.

Therefore, any 102(b) smoking gun that may potentially exist is likely to
exist on the systems of AllWest or some other registrar that Len may have
worked for prior to his employment with SnapNames in the Summer of 2000.
However, it may be the fact that no 102(b) prior art exists. In that case
the legal arguments turn to Section 103 of the Patent Statute to determine
if the invention was non-obvious. John I will defer to your expertise since
it has been a number of years since I have opened up Title 35 of the United
States Code.












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