Google and Others Sued For Automating Email

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @01:08PM 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.

1 of 273 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Usually patents that seem stupid aren't quite ... by joe_n_bloe · 2007-08-28 13:26 · 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.