"WWW" is a sub-domain. There is plenty of documentation about sub-domains before 1998. From what I'm reading about the patent, is that he is talking about wildcard sub-domains. I'm not sure when the wildcard (*.domainname.com) came out for sub-domains. For example, I have wildcard sub-domains for all of my domain names (I suppose I'll get a letter now). For example:
http://fightthepatent.adult-cybergames.com
http://anythingforthesubdomain.adult-cybergames.com
I didn't fully read the patent. Just glanced over it pretty much. So I could be wrong on what the whole patent is about.