Analyzing AT&T's Anti-Anti-Spam Patent

An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor is reporting in his eJournal taken, in turn, from Gregory Aharonian: AT&T has apparently been awarded a patent for circumventing certain spam filters, thereby providing slimeball spammers with yet a bigger hammer!" The patent covers "A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.)", although it's unclear exactly what AT&T want it for.

Comments

Re:Hey! Shortsighted people!

[GammaTau]

Has it occured to anyone that by patenting an anti-anti-spam technique, AT&T can legally forbid spammers from using that technique?'

If the technique is well-known and utilized prior the patent as well as extensively discussed in public forums (like nearly all ways of bypassing the spam filters are), then the patent can be nullified. In other words:

• If the spammers have been using this patented method, the patent is void
• If the spammers haven't been using this patented method, the patent has very little effect on spam

Wrong numbers

[Betcour]

Those numbers are very wrong. Spammers count returns in sales per MILLION emails, because the rate is so low. It's profitable because they send huge quantities of spam, so even a very low sale rate is quite profitable.

On the other hand real email marketing (done by a well known legitimate business, targetted to specific peoples who agreed to receive it) can get much better results.