Slashdot Mirror
E-Mail Forwarding Patented, PTO Sued
David Lee Ludwig writes "Earlier today, I ran across an article regarding an issued patent on e-mail forwarding. According to the president of the holding company, they're interested in making the technology open-source, however I fail to see where the innovation is.
The full text of the patent (6427164) is available online." Sadly, we've run altogether too many patent stories of late. In related news, the PTO has been sued to stop shredding the original documents related to the patents. Read on for more on that...
mgarraha writes "A
Washington
Post article
reports that the
National Intellectual Property Researchers Association
is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office
to stop them from destroying their archive
of paper documents.
NIPRA claims that PTO's new patent database
is not good enough to go completely paperless.
PTO had planned to begin disposal today,
but they are still negotiating with the group
that will take the paper off their hands."
Have you read the patent? The patent refers to a system where a mailserver which receives an email for an address no longer in use checks with _another_ server to determine the new address. Does Postfix do this? It doesn't seem all that useful to me, and possibly exploitable. (...my old scott.walde@sasknet.sk.ca doesn't work anymore. What's to stop someone else from registering a forward for that address to their own address and diverting mail that was intended for me. I haven't read the patent all the way through, so forgive me if they have thought of this.)
...rather, this looks like some sort of (centralized) email-address registry which can be accessed by e-mail clients/servers to look for a more recent version of an out-of-date e-mail address.
in other words, this is little more than an internet-based look-up table of e-mail addresses (with obsolete addresses pointing to the most recent address) + protocols for accessing that look-up table.
in my (admittedly cursory) of the patent, it doesn't seem to overlap with server-specific e-mail forwarding (i.e. what is normally done with e-mail forwarding). this isn't to say that this isn't a silly/sleazy patent, but rather that this won't necessarily interfere with how people currently handle e-mail forwarding (if someone sees an element of overlap that I am missing, please point it out!).
Not that any of this is clear from the write-up, of course; sometimes I wish that passing reading comprehension and composition courses was mandatory for internet usage... then I think again, because ninjas are awesome.
From the patent link A method of automatically resending an electronic message originally sent to a receiving user at a first address that is now invalid to a second address for the receiving user, wherein the second address has been registered with a forwarding address server
It's very specifically related to dealing with bouncing mail and having a registry set up for when the bounce occurs stuff can happen to get the mail to the right place.
Of course, I see a huge gaping security hole in this if I register the bounce address as mine.
Yet another case of great editor review of stories. What's with the inflammatory headlines ? Clearly the person submitting the story didn't even read the article.
>So it doesn't come anywhere near patenting traditional email forwarding.
The procedure you describe is traditional forwarding on some systems. For example, I once had a free GNN account (Global Network Navigator, AOL's "internet connection only" service that went under quickly). When GNN closed house, I was given the option to have everything forwarded to AOL for a period of time. All mail sent to me@gnn.com was forwarded to myotherID@aol.com. All web traffic destined to members.gnn.com/me was forwarded to members.aol.com/myotherID.
So, "forwarding" can indeed mean what this patent applies to. Not forwarding as in "Fwd:" but forwarding as in automatic redirection of email to a different address; just like the USPS calls it "forwarding" when you move and they send your mail to your new home. Not everyone calls it aliasing, and in fact there are many webhosting companies out there right now who offer "email forwarding" which does exactly this.
And yes, this patent sucks.
The thing is, this is NOT an innovation, it is merely an extension of what many people do already. My e-mail for the university of kansas has changed, but the old addresses were kept active and "forwarded" to my new address, essentially doing the same thing. the central server being my Universitys e-mail server, and the new address my new address. To move this system from the original institution is no change in technology, just a step in the same direction, it accomplishes the same goal in a slightly different way. It would be like patenting a joystick with 12 AXIS control, simply because you were the first to do it, then claiming that all controllers with 12 axis were under your patent, regardless of design.
But alas, many of this kind of patent is in force today, especially in the computer industry, simply because of the money it takes to challenge the patents.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
So far as I'm aware, traditional forwarding is done by the system the email was sent to. In the patented method, it is done by the user's mail agent; all the system the email was originally sent to does is bounce it back to the sender.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The procedure you describe is traditional forwarding on some systems.
No it isn't.
Traditional email forwarding works completely transparently to the client. You send your message, and it's delivered. The *server* handles any forwarding, *nothing* is returned to your client.
The patented method is *different* - in that, the email server knows nothing about the forwarding address, it just bounces the undeliverable mail. The client then (automatically) discovers an address to forward to, from a different server.
The only similarity is that the forwarding is automatic; the implementations are entirely different.
The patent still sucks, though.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
For kicks, create a hotmail account, in your preferences don't set it to sign up to any mailing lists...Wait a week and login, it will be flooded with spam (much of which the 'bulk/spam email detector' missed) even if your userid is something random and unguessable.
They don't sign you up for spam lists. Try creating your Hotmail account name with a random-sounding combination of several letters that don't spell any valid English words or proper names and numbers that don't look like a year in the 20th century. As long as the address is kept private, it won't be spammed.
"aimfiz69105" at hotmail.com has received zero spams in the past couple of years.
"rezrov" at hotmail.com has received about 300 spams since it was created last week.
My guess is that the problem is that Hotmail and other mail providers are apparently stupid enough to accept incoming mail with 300,000,000 recipients in the header. I can't think of any other reason why "rezrov" would get buried in spam almost instantly while "aimfiz69105" never gets any.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Have you read the patent?
Doesn't the post office hold prior art on this. They call it 'forwarding address' or something like that. Very innovative.
funny. i have been using hotmail for over a year however i have not seen a single banner ad, or even seen the website!
MS Entourage (for mac)
Outlook 2002 or Outlook Express 6 (for win32)
Those programs allow you to use hotmail as if it were an IMAP service. No ads, no bullshit, just mail.
Yes, software patents are bad, but this one isn't as bad as the article makes it out to be .... it doesn't come anywhere near patenting traditional email forwarding.
I think this type of patent is actually much worse than the kind that might have allowed traditional email forwarding to be patented. This patent is very typical of what makes most software patents so bad. The vast majority of software patents that make it to the front page of slashdot seem to have the exact same "M.O." or recipe. Most seem to describe obvious examples of using a database to store information, relate information, and then perform an automated action based on the linked information.
None of the component actions are ever really innovative or are even claimed to be (forwarding e-mail for instance). Instead, these patents claim that by using a database to automate a common or obvious process they are proposing a new and innovative solution. Other bad patents simply claim that using networks or the internet with existing processes achieves the same goal.
I think the examiners wrongly treat these patents like non-software patents that combine two or more existing elements or technologies in a new way that produces unobvious results. The difference is that software patents whose main innovation is the use of a database (or a network) are not only comprised of existing and obvious elements but they are also being combined in an existing and very obvious way. Databases are specifically designed to store and relate information and to allow for automated actions to be performed. Pre-existing elements using a pre-existing architecture or application should not so easily be classified as either novel or unobvious.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!