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.
Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Take off and nuke Marshall, TX from orbit ... (Score:3, Informative)
.30-06 ought to do it.
Other than that, not really, no.
This guy already won the lottery (Score:5, Informative)
Here's his facebook if you want to leave him a message [facebook.com]
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.
Re:Patents and trolls like these are bad (Score:2, Informative)
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]
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.
Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:3, Informative)
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 includes the v-card or not).
From my understanding of what is claimed, it looks like it will cover a system like in gMail, where it remembers the name of people who sent you the message from that address before. I don't think it was the author's intention to create a system that worked that way, but that is how patents work in the 'modern' world. Even if you aren't building in any way on the work of someone else, you can still get caught by their patent.
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]
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:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:3, Informative)
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.