Their challenge contends the Ideaflood patent came into being well after Apache web server developers had been discussing subdomain creation more than a year before Ideaflood filed its patent claim.

“This illustrates how an open-source project can establish a public record of technology development and thwart invalid patents,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jason Schultz.

“The public discussions on the Apache and other mailing lists have shown that Ideaflood’s patent claims were without merit and that the patent should be revoked before it causes any more damage to innovation on the Internet.”

IdeaFlood’s attempts to collect on the patent date back to 2004. Attempts to access their website for additional information returned errors at press time.