Patent ID: 7774432

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for registering multilingual domain names that include non-ASCII characters, the method comprising: providing a Web page including a field in which a user can specify a second-level domain name portion including non-ASCII characters using a non-ASCII character set, the non-ASCII character set being specified by an encoding selected by the user from among a plurality of encodings presented by the Web page; receiving a request to register a multilingual domain name in a top-level domain (TLD), the multilingual domain name having the specified second-level domain name portion including non-ASCII characters, each character in the specified character set having an associated numeric value, the second-level domain name portion indicated in the received request by a sequence of the numeric values that are derived from the non-ASCII characters of the second-level domain name portion; generating an ASCII-Compatible Encoding (ACE) for the specified second-level domain name portion based on the specified character set and the indicated numeric sequence for the second-level domain name portion; constructing an ASCII domain name whose second-level domain name portion is the generated ACE and whose top-level domain name portion is the TLD; determining whether the constructed ASCII domain name is available to be registered in the TLD and whether the indicated numeric sequence has already been reserved for another multilingual domain name registered in the TLD, wherein determining whether the indicated numeric sequence has already been reserved includes: searching for the indicated numeric sequence throughout at least one database that includes multilingual domain names for a plurality of non-ASCII character sets; and determining that the indicated numeric sequence has already been reserved when the indicated numeric sequence appears as a reserved multilingual domain name anywhere in the database; and when it is determined that the constructed ASCII domain name is available to be registered and that the indicated numeric sequence has not been reserved, registering the multilingual domain name in the TLD, the registering including: generating multiple distinct numeric sequence variants as equivalents for the specified second-level domain name portion of the multilingual domain name, each generated numeric sequence variant consisting of a sequence of numeric values; reserving the generated numeric sequence variants for the multilingual domain name; presenting a plurality of the variants to the user; receiving a selection of one or more of the plurality of variants presented to the user; and registering a domain name in the TLD corresponding to each of the one or more variants selected by the user.