Oh man, the patent system is berserk.

New patent, brought to my awareness by Slashdot. Claim 1 says:

1. A method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of:

assigning each member of said group a URL of the form "name.subdomain.domain"; and

assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "name@subdomain.domain;"

wherein the "name" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same and unique for each particular one of said members such that an only difference between said URL and said e-mail address for said member is that in said URL the "@" symbol of the e-mail address is replaced with a "." and wherein said "subdomain" portion of said URL and said e-mail address is the same for all members of said group. [USPTO.gov]

The Slashdot commentator says:

This is nonsense. My friend who ran for political office in 2000 used this exact naming scheme for his web site. All of us here can see how asinine this is. Will our legal system?

He's right that it's nonsense. It once again shows that the PTO is completely incapable from telling what is blatantly obvious from what is not. Unfortunately his friend doesn't count as prior art, since the patent was filed for in 1999.

It does seem quite likely that some prior art will show up. But really, as a matter of principle, this should be overturned based on obviousness alone. Otherwise it is really scary -- it means that the courts are also incapable of distinguishing the obvious from the nonobvious. And if that is the case, the patent system will unavoidably do more harm than good, because it is not fulfilling its reason for existence: reward those who come up with truly novel ideas for the work it takes to come up with them and to make them known to the world (and freely available to the world 20 years later) through patents. How can it do that, if it can't distinguish what is novel? It can't, period.