Company Claims Patent On Spam Filtering, Sues World 186
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.
Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (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?
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.30-06 ought to do it.
Other than that, not really, no.
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:5, Informative)
No. The Congress is.
They have lifetime guaranteed jobs (barring impeachment and conviction) because the Constitution says so.
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That's probably so the judge can't be threatened with a layoff to influence his verdict.
The payoff came when the appointment was approved. Staying in office is another thing. Cite Murphy's law here.
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:4, Informative)
But generally speaking.. they die first.
Out of the 111 justices that have served, 24 retired. That's over 20%.
. . . unless you're a quitter like Justice Stevens.
The man is 90 years old and has served this country for almost 35 years and you call him a quitter because he wanted to retire at 90? Incidentally how would you like to be judged if you lived long enough to retire at 65?
Just because justices are given lifetime appointments does not mean that they themselves can't retire if they choose. Being smart individuals, they probably understand that in older age, they may not have the capacity to serve their post effectively as someone younger/healthier. One reason some of them die before retiring is that they don't want to be replaced by the current administration because the current administration will appoint someone with opposing political views. Some do leave for personal/health reasons like Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, etc.
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:4, Funny)
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If the FBI wants to build databases of people who make offhand, whimsical comments in online forums I say more power to them. I work for a major storage vendor.
That's ok, just don't work in a book repository.
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If the FBI wants to build databases of people who make offhand, whimsical comments in online forums I say more power to them. I work for a major storage vendor.
That's ok, just don't work in a book repository.
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You *wish* they were that competent!!!
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Put me on a list, see if it means anything when everyone else is on one too.
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Well fortunately I'm thousands of miles from this judge, and don't own a single round of .30-06, so I guess I'm in the clear.
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Well fortunately I'm thousands of miles from this judge, and don't own a single round of .30-06, so I guess I'm in the clear.
I'm sure L.H. Oswald thought the same thing.
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Sorry I need to be more clear, shhh.
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:5, Funny)
Execute a patent troll or spammer = free citizenship
Execute a patent troll AND spammer = seat in congress
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Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. First of all, EDT isn't even the most favorable district for patent plaintiffs. There are something like half a dozen districts where plaintiffs do better.
If you nuked EDT, all you would do is cause the suits to spread out to other districts, to the detriment of defendants. The reason so many suits are in EDT is because EDT can provide reasonably speedy trials. There are two reasons for this. First, because there have been many patent suits there in the past, the courts are familiar with patent litigation, which is one of the more complex areas of litigation. When you have a patent case in a court that has not dealt with patent cases, it is very slow going. (And much more likely that the judge will make reversible errors, so if you do fight off the troll, you'll just end up doing it all over again when the troll gets the verdict thrown out and the case remanded for a new trial on appeal).
Second, EDT doesn't have many Federal criminal cases. Criminal cases take priority over civil cases in Federal court, due to the constitutional requirement of a speedy trial for criminal cases. In districts where there are a lot of federal criminal cases (e.g., any place where the stupid war on drugs is being heavily waged) civil cases can take months or years to even get to preliminary hearings. File a patent case in one of those districts, and you'll be tied up for many many many years--something neither side wants.
Given a choice between being sued in EDT and being sued in the plaintiff's home district (if that is different from the defendant's home district), I would bet that most defendants would pick EDT, to get it over faster and keep costs down.
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If speed is truly what people want, then the courts should refuse to take any of those cases at all, and simply have a bureaucrat make a decision within 24 hours, arbitrarily. This could be done as a free service, so the plaintiffs and defendants wouldn't even need lawyers.
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Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:5, Interesting)
You forgot the biggest reason...From wikipedia:
That means that any ambulance chaser can get in on the act. Add to that the different handling of appeals for patents:
And it become a patent troll feeding frenzy.
Reference article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (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.
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This seems to have been a major operating theory of the patent system since the early 90's. And yet, here it still is.
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This seems to have been a major operating theory of the patent system since the early 90's. And yet, here it still is.
The patent office has been screwed ever since Edison was in charge of screwing Tesla. Now all patents are useless or covered by national security.
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control
New Patent Idea (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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I use a touch screen you inconsiderate clod.
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I use a touch screen you inconsiderate clod.
I use a wet wire direct cranial link, you insensitive clod!
Bio piracy (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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WTF does this mean?
FTFThem
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Trolled by another patent troll. Darnit!
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You can be the sap who writes, signs, and mails the C&D letters for me. (:
Massively multi-target trolling (Score:5, Interesting)
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. [blogspot.com] 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 [blogspot.com] and NEON Enterprise Software [blogspot.com].
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cause a lot of trouble just to suqeeze the maximum amount of money out of their targets
Did you mean suck or squeeze ?
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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.
Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't bet on it. The judicial system and common sense aren't exactly best of friends.
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Procmail has been filtering email since 1990. Proving prior art on scanning a message for spam filtering should not be difficult.
But that's not what is claimed. Claimed is sender context information from an external reference.
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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[sic] 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.
It looks like conceptually (from reading the patent) he was trying to patent the idea of linking a finger-type service to email. The email program can hit up the original server to find any extra information about the sender (the patent itself mentions a v-card, but it's not in the claim so it doesn't matter if it includ
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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
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Doesn't this patent describe the standard DNS reverse-lookup performed by every MTA on the Received: headers since... nearly ever?
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I realize you are paraphrasing from the patent claims, and I have given up trying to understand them long ago, so thought I would ask.
Does this mean all bayesian filters do not infringe, since they don't use the header to decide which direction to take (IE sender lookup OR keywords) since they will do both checks regardless?
Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:4, 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.
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1): no. That's quite enough; not to me, but for 'them'.
2): yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Diehr [wikipedia.org] was the turning point.
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True. Alas, this decision is still considered as one of the turning points - if not the turning point - in the handling of software patents. If you read the decision (I did several years ago) it turns out to be wrongly worded, and those who did word it, later on regretted it partially.
Curing rubber using a specific algorithm was known, and the application implemented the same in a computer.
Since it was a Supreme Court decision, it was taken (maybe overly) as gauge to measure future cases, and the ambiguity
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Perhaps, but the patent in question doesn't even go into that depth of detail. It simply says it stores the emails context in a db, which it'd use later for some form of classification.The two problems I see with this is: 1) I thought patents were supposed to disclose some sort of detail regarding implementation and 2) are algorithms, even ones as loosely described as this, patentable?
I think you must not have read the actual patent carefully. It has a "DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT" section and a bunch of figures showing how things fit together in that system. It does not refer to spam filtering or any other type of mail classification. The described mechanism uses custom mail headers to provide the recipient "context" attributes (real name, physical address, etc.) about the sender, ideally with a pointer URL to a "context server" but optionally through multiple headers with
Patents and trolls like these are bad (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Is there not some rule that says you cant just sit there for all that time until making an infringement claim?
It's called Laches [wikipedia.org]
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Is there not some rule that says you cant just sit there for all that time until making an infringement claim?
While this is true; by the way with most legal proceedings; it is in practice a no-go. Who is to prove that you were aware of the implied infringement years ago? You could have been travelling, sick, bringing up the kids, and whatnot. Being late will severely restrict the damages; but severely restricting actual damages of tens or hundreds of millions will still result at your point 4/.
Forfeiting al
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Actually, it's a bit easier than that. The clock for laches starts when it's a situation of known or should have known about the infringement- and there's this short timeframe for trying to mitigate the infringements before you lose the right to at least enforce with the said infringers. All the things you mention won't count for much if it's in the open that there's an infringement- which is the case with this situation to begin with.
As an aside, it can be said that if there are any infringements within
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While we might differ on opinion on laches, and not all too much, could we agree that future royalties are still in the offing, once procedures are commencing?
I would not know why, as a proprietor of a legal right, my decision to pursue this right would be adversely affected by earlier lenience.
If this was the case, Microsoft had no issue in claiming infringement on the famous 235 (or so) intellectual property issues in the Linux kernel alone.
I for one take it, that - despite of limited damages - they could
This guy already won the lottery (Score:5, Informative)
Here's his facebook if you want to leave him a message [facebook.com]
Re:This guy already won the lottery (Score:5, Funny)
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I acknowledge that you were joking, but I am annoyed to no end by the idea that gambling is always irrational behavior, suited only to the illiterate of the working class.
The expected value of the profit (in dollars) of a given player in any lottery is negative. The expected value of the profit (in dollars) of purchasing insurance is also negative. However, asserting that gambling or buying insurance are therefore irrational reveals a misunderstanding of the mathematics and economics involved.
A glaring mi
Re:This guy already won the lottery (Score:4, Funny)
Then we nuke him from orbit, only way to be sure.
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...but what about a mathematician who WON the lottery?
He's either
A) a lucky member of the set of bad mathematicians who think they can win or
B) a phenomenal cheater
I'd say it's still wise not to trust him.
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A) a lucky member of the set of bad mathematicians who think they can win
Everybody can win, it just rather improbable. And if you don't play, you won't win. What has ''being a bad mathematician'' to do with all this?
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Lotteries are a really shitty bet. The payoff is much, much, much lower than the odds of winning. The house edge can be anywhere from 10% to 50% for a single bet. (e.g. for the UK lottery, you've got a 14,000,000/1 chance of winning, but the payout is roughly 7,000,000/1. A good mathematician would notice that he's going to be phenomenally better off if he places long-odds bets on sports at his local bookies (~10% house edge?), or going to a real casino (0% - ~6% house edge, depending on the game, with crap
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A good mathematician would notice that he's going to be phenomenally better off if he places long-odds bets on sports at his local bookies (~10% house edge?), or going to a real casino (0% - ~6% house edge, depending on the game, with craps being the 0% edge if you play a perfect game, which no-one can for any reasonable length of time, which is how long it takes to average out)
You are talking about asymptotic behavior of those games, and for the player that always implies that the best strategy is not to p
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If you want to give to charity, give to charity.
If you want a chance of winning it big, you could go to a casino every week and put {$,£}1 on #21 (or whatever your lucky number is) 4 times in a row, with the winnings from each stage all going on the next bet. That's 1.68 million if you win (you could go for 5 times in a row if it's not enough) and the odds aren't too far off.
Even though roulette is about the worst game you can play, especially if it's got a "00", in a casino, it's still going to be a
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You are right!
Well, on the downside, you will have to go to a casino, and more importantly, you will have to leave again after four tries. I see a very obvious problem here, in particular if you won thrice in a row and then lost everything in the forth try. Don't you? The two-lottery-tickets-a-year approach seems more realistic in that regard.
Full disclosure: I actually am a mathematician :-) and I hope you enjoy this exchange (I am enjoying it).
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Valid point, conceded.
If you've committed yourself beforehand to betting 4 times in a row, and you go in with $1, then your outcome is either "win $1.68million", or "lose $1". If you "lose everything" on the fourth bet, you've only really lost $1. The rest isn't yours because you'd already committed it ahead of time.
I
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Lotteries are a really shitty bet. The payoff is much, much, much lower than the odds of winning. The house edge can be anywhere from 10% to 50% for a single bet. (e.g. for the UK lottery, you've got a 14,000,000/1 chance of winning, but the payout is roughly 7,000,000/1. A good mathematician would notice that he's going to be phenomenally better off if he places long-odds bets on sports at his local bookies (~10% house edge?), or going to a real casino (0% - ~6% house edge, depending on the game, with craps being the 0% edge if you play a perfect game, which no-one can for any reasonable length of time, which is how long it takes to average out)
But if you spend, say, $10/month, that is $120 yearly, on Lottery, and then spend the same amount in a casino yearly, and do this for 10 years, which gives better chance of winning enough to retire comfortably, let's say one million dollars? I wouldn't be surprised if it's lottery...
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Lotteries which jackpot will sometimes reach a point at which a ticket purchase has slight postive expectation.
Not as much in the US due to gambling winnings being taxable, but it's still feasible.
There's also a point at which even though the expectation is slightly negative the sheer amount of money involved and entertainment factor (for some people who like planning how they'll escape from their spouse with all the money, for example) make it not unreasonable.
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That was what I was trying to say with the second point.
Re:This guy already won the lottery (Score:4, Funny)
Here's his facebook if you want to leave him a message
He probably has it filtered.
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With our revolutionary, patented technology, you can now edit the content of your e-mail after you send it. Even if the recipient has seen the mail already: one moment it reads one way; the next, it’s totally different. The content of any mail you send is entirely in your control, at all times. Even if the recipient has deleted his copy of the message, you are able to edit it. We call this remarkable technology dynamic mail content and it's about to change your life.
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Which is no doubt patented by this guy and we'll probably hear about it when he sues every message board in 5-10 yrs.
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I think his brain was also in a theta wave state when he decided he invented spam filtering and would sue the world.
A taste of the medicine (Score:2)
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.
Overbroad? (Score:2)
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.
The Patent Claims Sender Not Message Context (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.
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I would like very much if Gmal allowed you to specify custom filters, which include the option to REJECT mail instead of just spam filter it.
In particular, any mail that fails either an SPF or DKIM check is automatically either sender-forged or tampered with mid-transit, so it's bogus by definition.
Found it in my SPAM box (Score:3, Funny)
They're suing IBM? (Score:2)
Guess they've never heard of SCO.
nearly 15 years ago (Score:2)
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.
You can do a lot of spam filtering (Score:5, Interesting)
... 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?
Maybe I'm missing something, but... (Score:2)
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?
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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.
Actual Solution (well, sort of...) (Score:2, Insightful)
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 wou
documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm working on documenting it here:
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/InNova_v._36_companies_(2010,_USA) [swpat.org]
Help welcome.
Surely there must be a patent on patent trolling. (Score:2)
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 the sued companies go all the way (Score:2)
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.
More information on InNova Patent Licensing, LLC (Score:2, Flamebait)
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.
'Spam' filtering? (Score:2)
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.
They're suing IBM? Suicide. (Score:2)
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 attem
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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
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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.
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Ever read your own sig?
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And apart from being mentioned in this story, the thing that's unique to Texas is...?
(within context I mean *lol*)
Re:Good luck with that one (Score:5, Informative)
The Eastern district of Texas was, and perhaps still is friendly to patent trolls [nytimes.com]
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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?
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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."
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My "spidey sense" is tingling.