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Google and Others Sued For Automating Email

Posted by kdawson on from the promoting-the-progress-of-science-and-the-useful-arts dept.

Dotnaught sends us to InformationWeek for news of the latest lawsuit by Polaris IP, which holds a patent on the idea of responding automatically to emails. The company has no products. It brought suit in the Eastern District in Texas, as many patent trolls do — though the article informs us that that venue has been getting less friendly of late to IP interests, and has actually invalidated some patents. The six companies being sued are AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo. All previous suits based on this patent have been settled.

3 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Procmail v1.0 released in 1991 by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The patent isn't just email filtering, it also covers emailing the sender a canned response (from a repository) based on the content of the message. I'm sure procmail can do that, but unless they procmail included an example of doing just that, it's not prior art. I'm sure prior art does exist, though -- when usenet was king, moderated newsgroups did something similar.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  2. Usually patents that seem stupid aren't quite ... by joe_n_bloe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... but I did skim the first half or so of the claims, and this is one of the most-thoroughly-and-obviously-covered-by-prior-art patents I have ever seen.

    I'm sure that *well* before procmail there were products and academic papers covering exactly this subject matter in detail. How a patent like this ever passes the laugh test, I don't know.

  3. Can you be more specific? by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's abstract the patent. If you think that vacation meets even that then you're an idiot.

    Can you be more specific on exactly where he is an "idiot"?

    A method for automatically interpreting an electronic message...

    So far, so good.

    ...including the steps of (a) receiving the electronic message from a source;...

    Yes.

    ...(b) interpreting the electronic message using a rule base and case base knowledge engine;...

    Yes. If recipient == X then do Y.

    ...and (c) classifying the electronic message as at least one of (i) being able to be responded to automatically;...

    Not only "classifying" but also responding.

    Seems like he was right and you were wrong.