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email-address registry which can be accessed by e-mail clients/servers to look for a more recent version of an out-of-date e-mail address.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.
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.
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