Patent Hoarding Firm Sues Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, IAC & Borders For Automating Email Responses

from the because-no-one-would-have-done-that-without-the-patent dept

Wed, Aug 29th 2007 4:48am — Mike Masnick

It's time for yet another patent lawsuit filed in Marshall, Texas by a firm that appears to do nothing other than buy up patents and sue big companies. This time, the patent hoarding firm is called Polaris IP, and it's apparently one of a bunch of patent hoarding firms associated with a single patent attorney. He's suing Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Borders, AOL and IAC for using a rules-based system to process emails. The patent, as you might expect is extremely broad and seems to cover the obvious idea of setting up some rules by which an email is automatically sorted, or even a reply is selected. Lots of companies use such systems -- and while the concept may not have been widespread in 1998 when the patent was filed, does anyone really believe that it wasn't where the industry would have naturally (obviously) headed? Does anyone really believe that without this patent, no one would be using such rule-based sorting of emails?

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Filed Under: email, obvious, patents
Companies: polaris

29 Comments

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Xris, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:18am

Oh please ...
... I've been using procmail to sort my mail for decades.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:21am

"He's Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Borders, AOL and IAC for using a rules-based system to process emails."

I think you're missing an integral part of that sentence...
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:32am

counter sue
Let's hope they ask for 100 times their legal fees and counter sue these parasites.
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CWatters, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:37am

Prior Art
Like #1, I used PROCMAIL nearly 15 years ago to do the same thing, parsing email contents and sending out automated responses.

In this case I think that the various services noted above should band together and countersue this parasite out of business. But someone will settle instead of fighting and again the broken patent system will let the trolls win.
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Dimitri, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:47am

1998 patent, meet 1990 program
As Xris states, Procmail has been around for quite some time-- its release date was Dec 7, 1990 according to Wikipedia. Since Procmail predates the patent by 8 years, it seems that the patent is rather weak.
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Sanguine Dream, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:54am

Nine years??
This says the patent was filed in 1998. Does that mean they applied for it in 1998 or that it as granted in 1998? If it was granted in 1998 and they waited until now to act on it then this should laughed out of the courtroom and the patent nulified.
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Krayol, 29 Aug 2007 @ 5:54am

Broad patent post dates technology
Agreed Dimitri!

This technology was sold by a number of vendors well before 1998. I used it myself in the early 1990s.

How on earth does a totally non-specific patent get on the books years after everyone has the technology. Let's hope they all counter claim enough to put this guy out of business for good.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:12am

Re: Broad patent post dates technology
I personally think such lawsuits are good. With any luck, as these lawsuits are made (with more frequency as these firms pop up), hopefully more (public) pressure will be put on our failing patent system
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:14am

Re: Re: Broad patent post dates technology
I personally think such lawsuits are good. With any luck, as these lawsuits are made (with more frequency as these firms pop up), hopefully more (public) pressure will be put on our failing patent system

I personally blame the patent system, not firms taking advantage of its archaic rules
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:26am

Umm, even Outlook has had rules based autoresponses for years and everyone knows Microsoft never had an original idea.
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Overcast, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:38am

Actually, Exchange did it at that time - it was released in '97. So. ummm, not.

What an idiot, actually people who claim to have a patent on something, who are clearly lying should face penalties..
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angry dude, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:38am

patents are about claims, not titles
The patently-ignorant crowd of techdirt makes the usual mistake of judging patent by its title.

Patents are all about claims.
In this particular case claim 1 is this:

1. A method for automatically processing a non-interactive electronic message using a computer, comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving the electronic message from a source;

(b) interpreting the electronic message using a rule base and case base knowledge engine; and

(c) classifying the electronic message as at least one of (i) being able to be responded to automatically; and (ii) requiring assistance from a human operator.

Such claim would not go past patent examiner today ...
It is one of those patents filed back in 90s when everybody and his dog was scrambling to get on the Internet/e-commerce train one way or another

Current problems with the patent system (not ALL patents BTW, just some portion of them mostly dealing with anything Internet, e-commerce etc.) are the direct consequnces of the lax patent examination back in 90s.

But now US Congress wants to throw the baby out with the bath water

Why should the rest of us, real inventors with valid technical patents which DO promote scientific and technological progress (not e-commerce related) be deprived of our constitutional right to exclude others from making and selling our inventions for a limited period of time ?
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B, 29 Aug 2007 @ 6:40am

Win
That patent is so vague and broad that it covers any automated message (SMS, IM, email, automated phone calls?, etc). It looks like near the end of the patent though, they limit it to email and voice data, but I may be wrong. I just skimmed over the patent.
The assignee (Brightware, Inc.) has received a lot of recognition for their software. If that's the case, I'd have to assume that it's something more revolutionary then an auto-reply system, but the patent is so vague anyway, it really doesn't matter.
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Daniel, 29 Aug 2007 @ 7:40am

Ha ha ha... I was using mail filtering software in the 80's...
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Chris Maresca, 29 Aug 2007 @ 8:49am

Re: Oh please ...
And then there is 'vacation', which has been on most unix systems for ages.... IRC, I used it in 1994.

Chris.
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Chris Maresca, 29 Aug 2007 @ 8:53am

Re: Re: Oh please ...
According to the man page for 'vacation', it appeared in BSD 4.3, which came in out in June 1986.

http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/man/1/vacation.sendmail.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/w iki/BSD#4.3BSD

Chris.
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Sanguine Dream, 29 Aug 2007 @ 8:57am

Re: patents are about claims, not titles

Why should the rest of us, real inventors with valid technical patents which DO promote scientific and technological progress (not e-commerce related) be deprived of our constitutional right to exclude others from making and selling our inventions for a limited period of time ?

Real inventors and innovators should not be deprived with they do promote progress. And I would go as far as to say that there may be some e-commerce related patents that would be just fine as well. The problem is with patents like this one in which someone is just trying to game the system for a little cash. I get the feeling that if this patent was granted back before 1990 (which would predate nearly all the prior art mentioned here) then no one would be complaining. But to start a lawsuit in 2007 over technology that has ben common for almost 10 years?
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Boost, 29 Aug 2007 @ 9:53am

patent law set this precident already...
Maybe I wasn't paying attention in school, but doesn't the law say that you can't patent or copyright something that is already public knowledge? Such as a program writen and distributed as early as 1990 while s patent for it was filed in 1998...I realize I may be missing a key bit of information but it seems pretty cut and dry.
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Richard Ahlquist (profile), 29 Aug 2007 @ 11:00am

Re: patents are about claims, not titles
Ok following your logic.

Prior art relevant to the claims;
(a) receiving an electronic message;
See any patent dealing with a packet which is simply a message

(b) intrepreting
Uhh fella how do you think that electronic data winds up in your inbox? And rejection emssage ggo out for no existant addressees ?

(c) See (b)

This patent is bull$#@% Nothing to see here move along.
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Willton, 29 Aug 2007 @ 11:40am

Re: Nine years??
Nope. The patent was filed for in 1998, but it was not issued until 2002, so a patent holder cannot bring a claim of infringement until the patent is issued.
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Willton, 29 Aug 2007 @ 11:42am

Penalties
They do. They're called "attorney's fees."
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Willton, 29 Aug 2007 @ 11:48am

It's called "prior art"
and that would have to be something that the defense would bring out at trial.
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ehrichweiss, 29 Aug 2007 @ 12:23pm

Re: Oh please ...
I was thinking EXACTLY this. I've been sorting mail and responding to it automagically since long, long, long before 1998. I think I still have my .procmailrc from back then that I used to give spammers a mailbox full of their own "medicine", though it's obviously outdated since spammers no longer use legit return mail addresses.

I wonder if I should send it to the USPTO, the mostly incompetent judge in Marshall, TX and the patent troll..
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2007 @ 12:48pm

Re: Re: Nine years??
I don't pretend to have an understanding of the system (reliable truthful info is very hard to come by in these biased times) but if the patent was awarded to them in 2002 why would it take five years to make a case?
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Chris, 29 Aug 2007 @ 8:41pm

Sendmail...
Sendmail has done exactly what the patent describes since 1983 and BSD 4.1. Delivermail did much of it earlier than that.

Rules based processing of messages is nothing new.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2007 @ 1:18am

I'm suprised someone has not patented "being alive" and having the rest of use put to death unless we pay damages for being alive. It really is very specific in nature. It would probably be approved by the patent office.
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Willton, 30 Aug 2007 @ 7:25am

Don't know
Maybe the patent holder tried to resolve the problem amicably by offering a chance to license first. Maybe the patent holder did not realize what rights he had until someone told him. Who knows? What matters is 1) whether the patent is valid, and 2) whether the really was some infringement going on.
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