[Mimedefang] MD and all of its users appear to be in violation of a US Patent

[Joseph Brennan]

--On Friday, April 2, 2004 9:36 AM -0500 "Jon R. Kibler" 
<Jon.Kibler at aset.com> wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> Just came across this:
> 	http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36666.html
>
> A US patent granted to Postini...


Interesting.
>From the "summary of the invention":


> The present invention, generally speaking, provides for a unified
> electronic messaging solution in which individual, configurable user
> profiles are used to route and deliver electronic messages from various
> sources, wired and/or wireless, to various destinations, wired and/or
> wireless, in various formats.



Well, .forward and Procmail clearly pre-date 1999.  The claim has to
be more specific.

The "claims" section begins,



> What is claimed is:
>
> 1. A method of providing electronic messaging services in an email
> network  comprising a sending email server and a destination email
> server, wherein emails may be delivered from the sending email server to
> the destination  email server via an electronic message delivery path
> through existing  Internet infrastructure, the method comprising:
>
> (a) inserting an intermediate pre-processing service into the electronic
> message delivery path by changing a Domain Name Server entry containing
> an  IP address of the destination email server to contain an IP address
> of the  intermediate pre-processing service;



So it appears to be limited to an idea involving DNS.  The other claims
all relate to claim 1.

This still looks like an attempt to patent an idea rather than a device,
so it might be weak.  But imagine the dollars to be spent on lawyers to
establish that.



Joseph Brennan
Academic Technologies Group, Academic Information Systems (AcIS)
Columbia University in the City of New York