Uh, no, that's not what the article said and it's not what the patent, which is linked from the article, says. The patent is on the tiny tweak of selling matching e-mail addresses and domains (it says URLs but their examples show domains) of the form argle@bargle.tld and argle.bargle.tld.

I'm sure there is prior art from the discussions in 1996 but I can't remember enough details to dig that up. However here is something from 2 Jan 1997 that is clearly prior art for the selling personal domain names to people in the form first.last.something. http://listes.cru.fr/wws/arc/isoc.nommage/1997-01/msg00017.html Pass it on to anyone else who may be interested. --Michael Dillon