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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.
Don't bet on it. The judicial system and common sense aren't exactly best of friends.
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.
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...
Which may be exactly what's needed to at the very least have their patent invalidated and them driven out of business. At least, so I am hoping.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
If my understanding is correct, to simplify that language:
Step 1. Look at the headers. Does it tell you anything useful about the sender?
Step 2. If it does, use that information to look up other information about the sender somewhere else.
Step 3. If it doesn't, scan the message for keywords. Use those keywords to look up other information about the sender.
This covers anti-spam systems, as you gather an IP address from headers, then look up that IP in a database to see if it is from a known spam source.
Of course, this also covers a bloody lot else. Why else would you have headers except to find useful information about a sender? How big of a jump is it to looking for information about a sender from the headers of an e-mail? I wouldn't be surprised if this exactly describes AOL's mail system with additional user information from the late 80's.
The ______ Agenda
> If you're going to quote Wikipedia, why not just link to it?
Perhaps he doesn't need to. Perhaps he REMEMBERS this stuff from when it originally happened.
Many of us were computing (even online) LONG before Slashdot was around.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.