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?
the "world" being USA only (Score:1, Insightful)
its not like there are another 191 countries on this planet
it is funny though watching USA self destruct its business sector and morals through idiot companies like this and its culture of lawyers
in the rest of the world people become lawyers or doctors because they want to help people, they dont measure success by how much money they have.
in USA its the opposite, you become a lawyer or a doctor so you can point at a number in a banks spreadsheet and say "thats me and everything in life i represent"
lol
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.
Re:This guy already won the lottery (Score:1, Insightful)
...but what about a mathematician who WON the lottery?
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.
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.
Re:Massively multi-target trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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 would involve similar actions against the inane judge, such as funding his opponent's campaign(come on, you KNOW it happens all the time - nothing new about this tactic), ads on tv, and so on. Even 10 million in "public information" TV ads about his pro patent troll rulings would likely tank any chance of his getting re-elected. It's mean and nasty, but it's a known issue with any public official. You don't bite the public and businesses who got you into office unless you want to risk the same public and businesses helping someone *ELSE* get into office.
Don't go after the trolls. Go straight to the lawyers and judges and people in Congress who made the silly laws in the first place and get them to fix the mess that they created.
Re:Filed in 1996- Spam Filters already around (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.