MailBlocks sues Earthlink over Anti-Spam Tech

goombah99 writes "Mailblocks is suing Earthlink , claiming patents on Challenge-Response as a means of blocking spam. Slashdot recently discussed Earthlink's plans to implement a challenge-response email system. The next day mailblocks filed suit to defend their turf in the $118 million dollar anti-spam solutions market. MSNBC has a complete discussion."

Comments

Software patents.

[MartinG]

Don't you just love software patents.

Europeans, contact your MEP now or else we will have this stupidity as well. The vote is next month and it looks most likely to give the go ahead on allowing software patents in Europe.

I have contacted my MEP and am trying to set up a personal meeting with him. Please do the same. There aren't many of us doing this kind of thing.

Would TMDA be prior art?

[ptbarnett]

TMDA implemented the challenge-response mechanism long before Mailblocks came on the scene. Would that invalidate Mailblock's patent?

Besides, TMDA works, while Mailblocks doesn't. I grabbed a Mailblocks account while I could get a good username, and found that Mailblocks doesn't send out the challenge: it just discards my test messages as spam after 14 (?) days.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Text of first link

[JofCoRe]

Using state-of-the-art technology, an assemblage of talented, passionate and experienced individuals unlike slashdot's crew of moron editors

Am I the only one to notice that...? Somehow I doubt that's in the original. Clever and amusing, however :)

Obvious Prior Art

[Effugas]

Challenge-Response is the fundamental security mechanism for TCP, the reliable communication protocol used for everything from the web to SMTP itself. During the three way handshake between client and server, each sends the other a randomly generated 32 bit number, and each refuses to communicate unless that number is successfully returned intact. If either the client or the server fakes its identity, it will fail to receive the required value -- one of four billion -- and will thus be unable to complete the handshake.

At least, that's the thinking. Perfect security this ain't, but please -- the spec for TCP came out in 1981. TCP's security technique entirely encapsulates challenge-response systems for SMTP -- the same mitigation of false addresses through an inability to respond, the same caching of credentials once a response is received (you can think of a "trusted address" as a permanently open socket, with all the management headaches that implies!), etc.

In short, this is nothing new. But of course, we already knew that :-)

Yours Truly,

Dan "I Do Way Too Much Stuff With TCP" Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

EU Software patents.

[Martin Spamer]

I second this.

Brits can find out who your MEP is by entering your postcode here. Set aside any personal feeling you may have on the EU, ranting against it is more like to do harm than good.

Some ideas point to raise.

Point out you are a IT professional and you are writing in that capacity as well as a voter.

US companies have been allowed to accumulate large number of software patents for 30 years by a poorly managed US patent system.

European Companies will be forced to pay royalties to US corporations, even ideas they invented, but patented in the US.

European Companies can be prevented from competing in some areas by patents, either by cost or denial of access to certain technology.

Patents prevents fair competition and promote monopolies.

An expansion of the patents system in the EU to cover computer software is extremely damaging to the European IT sector.

Point out that software is about maths and numbers, if you cannot patent algebra B or numbers so why software.

If possible point out a simple example of a patent in your particular field, even better if you can rightly claim it was invented in Europe but patented in the US.

It isn't just earthlink they are suing

[Anonymous Coward]

Mailblocks has previous filed suits against Mail Frontier -- makers of the Matador plugin for outlook and outlook express, Digiportal -- makers of ChoiceMail, and Spam Arrest who offers end user and enterprise services that directly compete with Mailblocks.

Recent articles haven't mentions Digiportal or Mail Frontier, so it is possible that they have come to an agreement with Mailblocks.

Full article (dated 4/05/03) from the San Jose Mercury News.

Re:I did that

[otmar]

Checking my mail archive shows that have such a procmail rule since at least early '96.

In fact, I posted it to Usenet later in '96. I'm pretty sure that you can find lots of similar prior art in the google usenet archive.

/ol

I have possible prior art from 1993/1994

[Dr. Zowie]

In 1993/1994 I was a graduate student at Stanford University and designed a simple challenge/response spam filtering system that works substantially the same as the one being advertised. Unknown incoming addresses were entered into simple ASCII database, and the associated mails were stashed in individual files in a particular directory. Unique challenge letters were to be sent out, and the mail was to be delivered or canned depending on the response (or lack thereof) from the challenge.

I never finished implementing the system (I wrote my dissertation instead) but still have a midsized collection of emails about it.

Challenge/response has got to be "obvious to one versed in the art" -- I can think of at least three other people at Stanford who had the same idea at about the same time.

MailBlocks: Patent Info & Corporate Shenanigan

[multipartmixed]

- MailBlocks is owned by Phil Goldman, the WebTV millionaire
- Phil Goldman is skilled in the art of computing, and so he _obvious_ly thought of using a Challenge/Response system for stopping Spam.
- He's a .com millionaire, and former employee of Apple, Generial Magic, and knows what patents are worth, so he did a patent search
- Found patent 6,199,102 (Granted March 2001), and bought it from Christopher Alan Cobb
- Found patent 6,112,227 (Granted August 2000), and bought the owner, Jeffrey Nelson Heiner, who signed over all rights
- Patents are "one of the largest expenses that we (at Mailblocks) have."
- MailBlocks has also sued Spam Arrest (case pending in WA), DigiPortal, and MailFrontier (resolutions unknown)
- MailBlocks actually started suing before releasing a product of their own.
- Goldman regularly responds to penis enlargement spams with his credit card number and a request to have them delivered in a plain brown paper wrapper
- So far, none of them have worked (somebody should tell him creation != enlargement)

Here is an interesting article: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/556 5843.htm