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Company Claims Patent On Spam Filtering, Sues World
EvilAlphonso notes news of a "Texas" IP holding company suing 36 actual companies for violating its claimed patent on spam filtering. Techdirt deconstructs the patent itself, No. 6,018,761, which seems to amount to little more than a database lookup. It was filed in 1996 and issued in 2000 (despite the lawyers' press release claiming that it "was awarded... nearly 15 years ago"). Among the companies being sued are 3Com, Apple, Google, AOL, Yahoo, J.C.Penney, IBM, Dell, Citigroup, and RIM. Not Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, or Microsoft, oddly enough.
... it's the only way to be sure.
Seriously, it's bad enough that we have a patent system that allows these patent trolls to exist at all, but it really looks to me like one judge is creating a favorable environment most of the patent troll lawsuits in the entire US (and, given that the US seems to be far and away the number one country for patent trolling, maybe most such lawsuits in the entire world.) Isn't there any way to fire this clown?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I will be filing a patent for my method on submitting comments to websites that involve the use of a mouse, keyboard, computer, and monitor.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Next I'm going to patent my method for taking a shit.
Anyone caught shitting, is fucked.
I have prior art, you patent is invalid.
The list of targets picked by that entity is pretty impressive. Even though the article accurately notes that some big names are missing, it almost reads like a Who Is Who of the industry. Sort of duck shooting, but the really big ones...
The bad news is that even such an aggressive behavior isn't the worst that can happen with patents. It's bad, and I'm aware of the fact that non-practicing entities (NPEs) can go extremely far and cause a lot of trouble just to suqeeze the maximum amount of money out of their targets. I don't mean to downplay that problem.
But: form the perspective of a company that gets attacked, an NPE is only the second-worst possibility. At the end of the day, the NPE is just in it for the money and pursues no strategic objectives beyond that. So the big companies that are the targets here (and the IT companies among them are all pro-software-patent regardless) can initially try to get rid of the patent or prove they don't infringe, and if it comes to worst, they can and will negotiate a settlement, write a check and life goes on for them.
That isn't the case when a strategic patent holder seeks to limit the functionality of a competitor's product, possibly to the extent that the competitor gets driven out of business. Exclusionary strategic use of patents is much worse than anything an NPE will ever do. It harms competition and innovation in serious ways. It looks like Apple wants to enforce some patents regardless of whatever royalty the defendant (HTC, and maybe others in the future) would be willing to pay. And there's IBM's use of patents to preserve its mainframe monopoly against such companies as TurboHercules and NEON Enterprise Software.
its not like there are another 191 countries on this planet
it is funny though watching USA self destruct its business sector and morals through idiot companies like this and its culture of lawyers
in the rest of the world people become lawyers or doctors because they want to help people, they dont measure success by how much money they have.
in USA its the opposite, you become a lawyer or a doctor so you can point at a number in a banks spreadsheet and say "thats me and everything in life i represent"
lol
By the time this patent was filed for spam filters were already around. Indeed, in 1996 one had such sophisticated filters that used by as Jason Rennie's program iFile whiched used a Bayesian statistical approach to sort potential spam into a junk folder. Prior art is going to kill this quickly.
1/ Get ambiguous patent to a seemingly obvious method of spam control
2/ Wait 15 years
3/ Sue every IT firm under the sun
4/ Profit
What is claimed is:
1. A method of obtaining context information about a sender of an electronic message using a mail processing comprising the steps of:
Scanning the message, usinig the mail processine program to determine if the message contains a reference in a header portion of the message to at least one feature of the sender's context, wherein the sender's context is information about the sender or the message that is usefiul to the recipient in understanding more about the context in which the sender sent the message;
If the message contains such reference, using the mail processing program and such reference to obtain [sender] the context information from a location external to the message;
If the message does not contain such reference, using the mail processing program and information present in the message to indirectly obtain the [sender] context information using external reference sources to find a reference to the [sender] context information.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the reference to at least one feature is a reference to a location where context information is stored.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the reference to at least one feature is a hint usable to retrieve a location where context information is stored.
Is there not some rule that says you cant just sit there for all that time until making an infringement claim? There is something rather dishonest about waiting all this time to make such a claim for what looks like a rather obvious method.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
That sounds like a pretty lousy method, actually.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty crappy too.
Robert Uomini of Kensington CA already won a $22 million dollar lottery in 1995. And yes, it's the same person, because the patent application's name and city matches and this article says he's a mathematician and his linkedin says he has a Ph.D in Mathematics. Here's his real software website, notice anything familiar? Yep, the design is exactly the same, no doubt about it this is our guy.
Here's his facebook if you want to leave him a message
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Next I'm going to patent my method for taking a shit.
Anyone caught shitting, is fucked.
I have prior art, you patent is invalid.
Nah, that'd be prior fart
If you read the patent, it looks more like they describe a white-list. I'm pretty sure those existed before because I've never been allowed in any cool bars. Or Bushwood.
I really hope Blackberry get issued an injunction, then perhaps our elected overlords would get the message about obvious patents*.
* That is, amongst the tide of crap they suddenly receive.
Of course Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Microsoft are not involved. When they are within his own operation, inter-departmental squabbles really piss Satan off...
Wonder if he spams to test his patent
Seriously, I think the claims of the patent are far too vague. It covers any kind of lookup you could do based on information in the email headers. No specific mechanism for doing this is defined. I really, really hope someone with a clue litigates this.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
The patent claims obtaining context information about the sender. However, spam filters obtain context information about the message not the sender. In general, spam filters care little about the sender as the sender is almost always forged.
I got notification from them as well but it went to the SPAM folder. Sorry.
Please send me the physical address of your organization and will gladly stop by with payment. No P.O. boxes, please.
Guess they've never heard of SCO.
Well, 'nearly' is sort of vague..
Hopefully they goto court, and it becomes a big expensive mess for a LOT of companies that have powerful lobbying arms. Then the patent system might get a 2nd look.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... without looking at the headers.
1) the IP address of the originating end of the TCP connection, for lookup in a block list, is not in the headers
2) the SMTP HELO/EHLO - not in the headers
3) the envelope from and to addresses - not in the headers
4) the triplet of IP address, from and to for grey listing - not in the headers
5) the text of the body
6) the domains in any URLs in the body, for looking up in blocklists
7) the IP addresses that the domains in 6 resolve to.
The patent is very badly worded. I would claim that every header would contain some information which would be "usefiul (sic) to the recipient in understanding more about the context in which the sender sent the message".
In that case, how could any message "not contain such reference".
Is the patent just claiming to cover the headers, or the body as well. And as for the misspelling!
Things in the header that might possibly be covered might be any pre-existing "received-from" IP addresses for looking up in blacklists, X-Mailer, Mime and Content type headers.
What about "Missing Headers"? could this patent be claimed to cover looking for something which doesn't exist in the headers?
How did J.C. Penney get on the hit list? Have they updated their line of polyester slacks to include spam filtering in addition to stain resistance?
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Some Scottish hippy friend of mine alleged her charity group managed to fight the good fight against patent trolls by applying for their own patent. Back in 1997 some Texan asshats applied for a patent on basmati rice. Of course this is bio-piracy and as insane as it sounds, the patent was actually granted. Clearly the patent system was as bent as a butchers hook (it still is?). Needless to say this would have destroyed countless livelihoods in India and probably left a lot of people to starve to death. In order to raise awareness for this problem and to put huge pressure on the American government to stop allegedly taking backhanders and burying the problem under red tape the hippy group applied for a patent themselves. They decided that seen as people enjoy eating chips (British chips = french fries in the USA) they decided to apply for a patent on a way of eating chips they had invented, and that is of eating chips with salt. They proved it perfectly legal under existing US patent laws and caused enough of a shitstorm to get the press involved and damage the bureaucrats PR until the patent was un-granted.
I cannot vouch for the truth of this tale she told me but I looked it up and found some pages backing up her claims.
http://www.purefood.org/patent/frenchfries032602.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmati
Perhaps a realistic solution would be for all of the companies to band together and instead of fighting the trolls one at a time, send all of that money - figure a billion+ dollars at Congress to solve this idiocy once and for all. 36 major companies surely can cough up 20-30 million each. They probably spend that much every few years on dealing with trolls and other legal issues surrounding patents anyways. The downside, of course, is *of course* they would make it favor them.
Other options of course would involve similar actions against the inane judge, such as funding his opponent's campaign(come on, you KNOW it happens all the time - nothing new about this tactic), ads on tv, and so on. Even 10 million in "public information" TV ads about his pro patent troll rulings would likely tank any chance of his getting re-elected. It's mean and nasty, but it's a known issue with any public official. You don't bite the public and businesses who got you into office unless you want to risk the same public and businesses helping someone *ELSE* get into office.
Don't go after the trolls. Go straight to the lawyers and judges and people in Congress who made the silly laws in the first place and get them to fix the mess that they created.
Seriously, after a few weeks of EVERYBODY in the whole world not filtering any spam whatsoever; The problem should resolve itself.
Idiot trolls...
Next I'm going to patent my method for taking a shit.
Anyone caught shitting, is fucked.
Fuck that shit.
Not if he's from Texas.
Apparently Texans think "patent" is short for "patently obvious" you should be allowed to make a shitload of money for making sure the rest of the world doesn't do the patently obvious.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This doesn't bode well for the fight against cyber crime.
All of the companies sued are direct competitors of M$. This ploy was concoted by M$ ro eliminate all of their competitors much like they tried to do by using SCO to eliminate GNU/Linux. M$ has shown they are not trustworthy and SweatyB and his crooks will never be trustworthy. It about time for Obama to bring the criminals at M$ to justice.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
the plaintiff probably was pissed their JC Penney catalog was put in the trash by their mom, so they couldnt look at all of the half-nekkid models showing off JC Penney Bras and panties...
I'm working on documenting it here:
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/InNova_v._36_companies_(2010,_USA)
Help welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Ever read your own sig?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
* ^Content-Type: text/html
* ^Message-ID: *.boxbe.com
* ^Received: from taggedmail.com
Sue me.
Texas on patents is a very very dark gray.
"..."
And apart from being mentioned in this story, the thing that's unique to Texas is...?
(within context I mean *lol*)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
The Eastern district of Texas was, and perhaps still is friendly to patent trolls
In fact, there are probably a number of business-process patents that could be construed as covering this technique. Surely some of them are licenseable or for sale.
Lets hope someone who was sued is willing to take this all the way and get the patent overturned (especially in light of what was said in Biski) instead of just caving in and writing this scumbag a cheque to make them go away.
At the very least, someone needs to appeal this to a higher court than the one in Texas. The court of appeals for the federal circuit is less likely to just rubber stamp things in the way the courts in Texas seem to do.
Fuck that shit.
i think you are doing it wrong...
The patent is a description of X.500, except over http. Remember X.500 was the directory service designed to support X.400 internet messaging (kind of like email), the first version of the standard was published in 1988.
Bob Saget says: Don't fuck that shit.
Not sure if they're actually located in Marshall, TX. I found this public record:
INNOVA PATENT LICENSING, L.L.C.
16055 SPACE CENTER BLVD STE 235
HOUSTON, TX 77062-6212
Taxpayer Number: 32042021249
If anyone can get corporate officials' names and phone numbers that would be interesting.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
the plaintiff probably was pissed their JC Penney catalog was put in the trash by their mom, so they couldnt look at all of the half-nekkid models showing off JC Penney Bras and panties...
which, as Star Trek has taught us, is far more provocative than anything on the Internet.
I said *unique to Texas*. I bet you can find a load of places when you put the spotlight on them look "OMG they're the worst!!!" ... but comparisons can only come from looking at more places, for it to be unique to Texas, it must be lacking everywhere else. Okay it showed Texas was above the national average for patent wins for those that make it to trial, it also says that only 5% of cases make it to trial, and doesn't present the national average for that figure. So I repeat, how is this unique to Texas?
(apologies if the answer if more than a few pages in of that link you sent, I skimmed thru but it just looks like you're trying to answer "how's texas bad" rather than what I asked)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
They are suing smaller, financially troubled companies, while leaving giants that can actually put up a fight in the courtroom alone. Sounds like a real legit claim! Maybe companies should be banned from patent filing when they try crap like this (yes Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, I'm looking at you too).
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
Why do I get the feeling that the DICK Cheney is involved?
My "spidey sense" is tingling.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Great read, thanks for sharing.
I seem to recall an old government re-education drive.
"This is your brain."
Egg cracks, drops into frying pan, and sizzles.
"This is your brain on patent."
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I hope they win... then I hope that Hormell foods sues them for damaging thier previously valuable IP reguarding processed pork products.
If these guys invented Spam filtering, them they must have been a driving force behind calling it Spam, infringing Hormell's valuable Trademark.
jeesh, these guys sound like someone from a Monty Python sketch. ...
bloody vikings.
Please, Mr. suing IP company, get your coffee and stop acting like a child...
Actually, no... It's "IP" Attorneys that think that- and many of the trolls reside in Texas because the East Texas District Court happens to be favorable as a venue for this sort of crap- mainly, as best as I can tell, because the Court's less familiar with tech so they follow what the granted patent says- never mind that the patent clearly shouldn't have been granted.
IBM has the largest patent portfolio of any company in the world. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there they probably have a patent on "method and process of transferring Oxygen to erythrocytes through periodic pressure changes" (a.k.a. breathing) They will bury these trolls alive with paperwork, lawyers, motions, depositions, etc. They probably have more IP lawyers on staff than this company has dollars of annual revenue.
And they don't settle IP suits. Ever.
They can as SCO how its IP extortion attempts worked out. Maybe the chart of their stock price would do the trick...
Methinks IBM will be dropped as a defendant as soon as they dig out their desks from the crates of paperwork.
SirWired
This is about a message system that when delivering or presenting a message looks up and expands one or more headers.
So inside a machine message from UID 123 to UID 456 becomes message from Bob to Tim and the names Bob and Tim are not guaranteed to be unique.
It turns out that sendmail has a content file and a header file and the header file gets looked up linked based on a unique ID encoded in the file name.
The location of dominant prior art would likely be any message system prior to TCP/IP. So AOL and even "talk" and "wall" would be prior art. Talk assembles a header knowing a UID and then in a data base lookup of the password file at the near or far end fills in the blanks. /dev/ttyN
talk someone
looks up a name or other info.
Another equivalent would be any filter that placed messages based on any id hidden in a header or combination of headers into a folder that contains additional info. If I filter all messages from 123AgLt@foo.mil.gov and drop it into a folder called PresOblama then I would know that all messages from that account originated from "Preston Oblama. The name is in a data base (the file system) and so reading messages involves a data base external and apart from the message. So any filter into folders would be prior art.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Since "spam" is basically defined by most people as "email I don't want", this company must have created technology to read a human mind and read human email then the tech properly categorizes messages and dump out the ones their humans "don't want". Given that human "wants" and "don't wants" change from moment to moment, tracking them is a pretty big task.
Do advertisers know about this yet?