Online Greeting Cards Patented

Trailer Trash writes "According to this story at bizreport.com, Hallmark has given in and licensed Tumbleweed Communication Corp's patent for delivery of online documents with e-mail notification. Will the idiots at the patent office never stop? Jeff Smith of Tumbleweed claims to have been granted three patents last year."

Comments

So what you mean to say

[Safety Cap]

...is that someone can patent the process by which email can be generated which directs the recipient to click some link, which delivers a message on some dad-burn web page?

Yup, the whole world has gone insane. I'm going to go cry now.

Re:So what you mean to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Phew. Another One. Maybe this has been on Slashdot before?

"Method and system for dynamic server document encryption" - 1997

Abstract

A method and system are provided for secure document delivery over a wide area network, such as the Internet. A sender directs a Delivery Server to retrieve an intended recipient's public key. The Delivery Server dynamically queries a certificate authority and retrieves the public key. The public key is transmitted from the Delivery Server to the sender. The sender encrypts the document using a secret key and then encrypts the secret key using the public key. Both encrypted document and encrypted secret key are uploaded to the Delivery Server, and transmitted to the intended recipient. The intended recipient then uses the private key associated with the public key to decrypt the secret key, and uses the secret key to decrypt the document. In an alternative, equally preferred embodiment of the invention, the sender uses the public key to encrypt the document. In yet another embodiment, the server transmits the document to the Delivery Server for encryption.

Thats just PGP isn't it?

Re:So what you mean to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question here.. if spam was outlawed, would that invalidate any patent based upon it? I guess even if that doesn't happen automagically, then it could easily be done in a court, right? Like "sure, they patented it first, but they have no legal use for it"?

Good!

[dangermouse]

I hope this patent stifles the shit out of the email-a-link industry.

Ask and ye shall receive

[JohnA]

The company I helped found in 1995 started doing this in December 1995, with a launch in February 1996. It was an internet greeting card site, and included such AMAZING features as e-mail notification of a new card to a recipient, and an e-mail to the sender when the card was viewed. The Internet Archive has an archive of the page as it was in December 1996 at:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961226182315/http://w ww.cardclub.com/

Anyway, if anyone is challenged by this in court, let me know. I'm sure I can dig out all sorts of documentation that predates the filing dates of the patents in question.

I can patent my work now!

[cmoney]

Hey, if you read their press release, they have a list of the their other patents in their "patent portfolio." Mostly stuff dealing with document distribution, encryption and notification.

Over the past two years, I've been working on a distributed system where an operator in Wash, DC scans 250+ pages a day and is turned into PDF, OCRd, indexed, and then distributed via the web. We're up to 9GB of data and a few mil in annual revenues. There's gotta be a patent in there somewhere if these idiots can patent this stuff. Or at least prior art!

Same as a regular passworded site?

[grahamsz]

How is this different from any password protected site which uses http basic authentication and email based registration.

Say you go to a site and create an account (the details of which are emailled to you)

That then means that the url:

http://username:password@website.com

has been created for you!

Bizreport isn't responding for me so i am just assuming that the description of the patent posted by other users is valid.

From the Patent office site...

[Robber Baron]

An electronic document delivery system and methods of its use are provided. A document, preferably in a portable format, is forwarded to a remote server (e.g. using HTTP to "push" the document to the server). The server sends a generic notification of the document to an intended recipient, and the recipient can download the document from the server using local protocols. In preferred embodiments, the invention is used for the controlled delivery of portable documents from a sender to a large number of recipients, using a network of servers that route the documents and notifications in a store and forward manner, while providing routing and accounting information back to the sender.

Egad! Sounds like a glorified e-mail system! With attachments! And distribution lists! What a novel concept! But wait...It's not even attaching the document in question??? It's merely sending a link to a site where the file is located! Well,I don't know about you guys, but I was sending hyperlinks via e-mail prior to the patent filing date. Either I get to patent the wheel, or this is a non-starter. Somebody in the patent office needs a few whacks with the stupid stick... And don't even THINK about trying to collect royalties on this one.

What about right to link?

[AyeRoxor!]

Thanks to 2600 Magazine and The EFF , we all have a legal precedent for the right to link from our sites to wherever we wish (More info at 2600). Might this also apply to linking from our emails, thus invalidating the patent? Which takes precedent? I would imagine a judge and/or jury.

Re:READ THE DAMN PATENT FOOLS

[tshak]

I don't think /. is responding unfairly. For example, we do something similar to validate email addresses of people who sign into our system. They get a specal "VCODE" in a "Private URL (PURL!)" (essentially a unique MD5 hash) which they click on to get validated. The entire project took maybe a few days (including meetings arguing about pointless implementation "issues"). The code is minimal. The amount invested is minimal. The concept is trivial. This is all obvious when you read the abstract:

A document delivery architecture dynamically generates a private Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to distribute information. Each private URL ("PURL") uniquely identifies an intended recipient of a document, the document or set of documents to be delivered, and (optionally) other parameters specific to the delivery process. The intended recipient of a document uses the PURL to retrieve the document. The server, upon retrieval of the document, customizes the behavior of the retrieval based upon attributes included in the PURL, as well as log information associated with the retrieval in a data base. This architecture and usage of PURLs enables secure document delivery and tracking of document receipt.

Looks almost verbatim to our design docs!

Hey I never thought of that.

[crisco]

What happens when a patent is invalidated by prior art? Can the parties who demonstrated prior art file a patent? Or does the fact that they didn't file a patent invalidate any claim they have on the invention.

Re:Just the facts ma'am...

[pclminion]

During my company's battle with Tumbleweed, we looked long and hard for prior art. We found none. Their patent is very carefully worded so as to exclude any of the prior art. Some previous projects come close to the patent description, but none seem to match it.

We were screwed, and had to change our design. I hate these assholes.