Patent ID: 7761583

Claim:
A method for validating ownership of a domain name, the method comprising: retrieving with a domain name authentication system one or more domain name ownership records, each domain name ownership record pertaining to a domain name and identifying a registrant that registered for that domain; confirming validity of the one or more domain name ownership records with the domain name authentication system; in response to confirming validity of the one or more domain name ownership records, marking the domain as valid with the domain name authentication system; providing an indication of validity of the domain from the domain name authentication system to a client application; periodically crawling one or more web sites with the domain name authentication system, the web sites containing the one or more domain name ownership records; re-confirming with a domain name authentication system validity of the one or more domain name ownership records with the identified registrant based on the change in the one or more domain name ownership records; and marking the domain as valid or invalid with a domain name authentication system based on re-confirming validity of the one or more domain name ownership records.