IBM Patents Changing Color of E-Mail Text

theodp writes "Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for its 'System and method for comprehensive automatic color customization in an email message based on cultural perspective.' So what exactly did the four Big Blue inventors come up with? IBM explains: 'For example, an email created in the US in red font to indicate urgency or emphasis might be mapped to a more appropriate color (e.g., blue or black) for sending to Korea.' IBM took advantage of the USPTO's Accelerated Examination Program to fast-track the patent's approval. BTW, if you missed the 2006 press release, IBM boasted it was 'holding itself to a higher standard than any law requires because it's urgent that patent quality is improved.'"

Comments

But... wait...

[Bazman]

Can't we just tag the text with some kind of semantic markup, and then use some kind of "sheet of styles" that relate the markup to the appearance? Sound familiar?

Re:But... wait...

[sopssa]

I prefer plain text because its 100x more secure than HTML with how its rendered. Theres various exploitable software and even drive-by-download exploits, and then you can use hotlinked images to track who reads emails (and spam them even more).

Yes, my email client supports html emails. It even has it enabled by default. But because of that, I changed it to show text version to me before and just when I click it will show me the html version

Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are bad

[presidenteloco]

Because most of them would take most competent software engineers about 5 minutes to think up themselves if presented with the problem that the patent claims to be a solution to.

The programmatic solution is often obvious from a routine logical analysis of the problem and its domain, and standard modelling techniques.

The examiners seem not to be able to have a proper idea of non-obviousness (to a practitioner in the field), when it comes to software patents.

This causes areas of software work to be unreasonably closed off to any reasonable creative developer, and that's just a pain in the ass. So we basically say, look, if I could have thought of that without breaking a sweat just by using the standard analysis and coding techniques of the trade, then I'm pretty much going to ignore the "patent" on it, aren't I.

Re:Well I'll be dipped in dogshit...

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm, aren't those fat multi-color pens and multi-color typewriter ribbon evidence of prior art?

This should be modded +1 Funny, because there is no way that this post can be serious. Writing a letter with a multi-color pens gives you a letter with multiple colors. When you send it to people with different cultural backgrounds, the colors of your letter don't automatically change so that they have the same cultural meaning for your recipients as they do for you. Maybe such a pen exists in the world of Harry Potter. But in the real world, this doesn't come even close to prior art that anticipates this invention.

Re:Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are

[Darkness404]

But its also preventing the problem, imagined or not, from being solved. I believe that if software patents are allowed (and I believe that they shouldn't be allowed, but for arguments sake lets say they are allowed) then the patented idea needs to be in software produced by the company within 3 months of the patent being filed. If not then the patent is automatically voided.

How many of you think this will actually be used? It won't be, it however, does prevent me from making a program to solve this "problem".

No more HTML e-mail?

[the pickle]

Does this mean we can expect IBM to start suing anyone who uses HTML-formatted e-mail? Because I think that would probably be a good thing.

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