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Company Claims Patent On Spam Filtering, Sues World

Posted by kdawson on from the guess-where dept.

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.

5 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.
    1. Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... by countertrolling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why? He's doing us all a big favor. Nothing will bring a system down faster than exploiting it for all its worth. More patent trolls are what is needed, lots more.. until the damn thing chokes on its own vomit.

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
  2. Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around by lennier1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't bet on it. The judicial system and common sense aren't exactly best of friends.

  3. The Patent Claims Sender Not Message Context by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > 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.