Domian Name Expiry and SEO

I thank the people at www.spectulise.com for the following bit of advice - Google has a patent on checking the expiry of domain names – the theory being that a domain name which has been around for longer or is paid upfront for the next 5/10 years shows that the company has a serious long-term plan and isn’t on the web for the short-term or just to create short-term spam/directory websites. Therefore, when registering your domains, to do so for at least 5 years at a time. This will potentially show your site to be of a higher calibre and professionalism to those which just renew from year to year. This probably makes little difference at present but it may become a feature of the Google algorithm and would then become important.