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.'"

The (only) patent claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds interesting. A lot of Slashdot postings regarding patents attract comments about how it has already been done or is obvious. Just to keep things in perspective, here is the (only) claim from the patent:

A method for customizing color in an email message based on cultural perspective of each email recipient comprising the steps of: determining at least one existing color used in an email message; analyzing at least one of a domain name or user information for each recipient of the email message to determine a region corresponding to each email recipient; searching a color mapping database to correlate the at least one existing color in the email to at least one approved color corresponding to each region of each email recipient, wherein said at least one approved color conveys a consistent meaning with a meaning of the at least one existing color in the email; comparing the at least one existing color used in the email message with the at least one approved color for each email recipient, wherein if the at least one existing color does not match any of its corresponding approved colors for each email recipient further comprising the steps of determining a selected approved color to be displayed to each email recipient; and automatically modifying the at least one existing color in the email to at least one of the selected approved colors for each recipient of the email message.

For something to anticipate this invention, it must include all the elements and limitations of the claimed invention. For obviousness, you do not have to find every element in a single piece of prior art, or necessarily even in a number of pieces of prior art. The differences should be small enough that you would someone familiar with the prior art would independently come up with the same invention (not the precise legal definition of obviousness, but the general gist of it).

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

[EvanED]

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.

Sometimes, though, figuring out what the problem is, or even that there is a problem in the first place, is decidedly non-trivial.

I'm not nearly as anti-patent as most people around here are, and this patent is borderline at best IMO, but I do think it falls into this category.

Re:Typical IBM strategy

[bipbop]

So you perjured yourself [technocrat.net] several times? Nicely done!

IBM Employees are rewarded for number of patents

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the root cause, and is the case I suspect in many corporations.

At IBM, you get something like $500 USD for a filed patent, something like that again if it's accepted, plus internal "points" which give you additional bonuses after a certain number of patents have been reached.

In addition, promotions to higher levels are significantly helped by displaying a large number of patents.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers that decide whether to file or not a given patent proposal also get more bucks based on the count of how many gets pushed out.

From there, it's only logical that whatever the execs say or claim, underneath, everybody's going to file as much crap as possible.

What's "colour" anyhow?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should've patented a system to translate emails from British to English and vice-versa, so that words like "color" get spelled with extra "u"s on British systems and without them on normal systems.

Would've been a much better patent.