Posted on 08/29/2007 9:14:36 AM PDT by ShadowAce
The companies are accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Polaris IP. The patent has a long history in litigation, but all the cases have been settled out of court.
Six major Internet companies have been sued for using computers to process their e-mail.
AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo stand accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Texas-based Polaris IP.
Attorneys representing Polaris IP filed a claim of patent infringement on Monday in U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas.
The lawsuit charges the companies with implementing systems that "comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines" as described in the patent held by the plaintiff, "Automatic message interpretation and routing system."
The lawsuit seeks an injunction against continued infringement. If granted -- a remote prospect at best -- the injunction would have a significant impact on the defending companies.
A more likely scenario appears to be a payday for the plaintiff. "It looks like Polaris IP is in the business of licensing patent rights and has no desire to enforce its requested injunction," said Dennis Crouch, associate professor of law at University of Missouri School of Law and the author of the law blog Patently-O, in an e-mail. "I expect that Polaris IP will be willing to settle these cases for what it believes is a reasonable six- or seven-digit figure."
Crouch pointed out that the message routing patent at issue has been involved in litigation many times. "There are no published opinions associated with these cases and they have all been settled," he said.
Polaris IP, Crouch observed, "appears to be part of a web of IP-related companies associated with attorney David Pridham." These companies include Orion IP, Constellation IP, IP Navigation Group, Cushion Technologies, CT IP Holdings, Triton, Circinus IP, and Firepond.
Pridham did not respond to a request for comment.
The method and system detailed in the patent describes a way "for automatically interpreting an electronic message including the steps of (a) receiving an electronic message from a source; (b) interpreting the electronic message using a rule base and case base knowledge engine; and (c) retrieving one or more predetermined responses corresponding to the interpretation of the electronic message from a repository for automatic delivery to the source."
The Eastern District of Texas has become a favored venue for filing patent lawsuits. Polaris IP has launched three other patent cases there in the past two years against numerous technology companies, including Art Technology Group, Oracle, and Sirius Satellite Radio. All three of these cases have involved the same patent, which has a long legal history.
"The Eastern District of Texas has seen a flood of patent litigation in recent years based on its reputation as a patent-friendly court," said Crouch. "Interestingly, that reputation is rapidly changing as the court invalidates more patents."
Attorneys representing Polaris IP did not return calls seeking comment.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Software patents suck.
Yep--and this is a very good example of why they suck.
Software patents suck.
No kidding, to everyone who thinks being against software patents is un-American keep in mind there is nothing more American than building the better mouse trap. But if mouse traps were patented the same way that software is someone would hold a patent which goes something like this:
A device intended to attract to, or detect a rodent or pest moving over it surface and to then to trap or kill the rodent..
Software patents tend to be trivial, and are often used by small companies to try to shake down larger ones for cash...as is happening in this example. Copyright is the appropriate form of protection for software, as it is for books and music. No author would try to patent a particular sentence in his book, but that’s the equivalent what many software patents try to do.
This is the technology equivalent of patenting a hammer.
Many, probably even most, do, but there is a place for some software patents. Complex, non-intuitive algorithms such as LZW compression and RSA encryption at least make sense in something that is patentable -- a specific, detailed process.
As far as I can see, whoever at the Patent Office approved patent 6,411,947 was egregiously ignorant of prior art in the field. sendmail/procmail I believe are clearly prior art in this field (which I ironic since 6,411,947 also references the far older language COBOL with “Software coded systems for executing procedural rules using well known computer languages, for example, COBOL are not well suited for implementing a knowledge-based system for interpreting incoming electronic messages. Indeed, such procedural rules would require impractically large and complicated branched coding structures to respond to the unpredictable and intricate content of the incoming electronic messages.” As the Patent Office should have been cognizant of, procmail for that matter was already using its own “recipe” language, and sendmail has used for two decades used an amazingly complex production rule base for its configuration.)
IMHO, this application is obvious, and therefore non-patentable. Not necessarily trivial to implement, but obvious. So, in my opinion, the very existence of this patent shows the examiners don’t understand what they’re evaluating in this realm.
Looks like we have some old-time confidence guys trying out a more legally acceptable version of their old tricks.
BTW, this was filed in 1998. I was using cc:Mail's rules to route and reply to mail according to the text within it before that.
Stupid patent....but they ~should~ be sued for responding with automated boilerplate to customer issues! (Of course, the helpdesk e-slaves whom they would otherwise employ would only read scripted responses over the phone or retrieve them from a database and send them to you in email.)
Anyone expressing an opinion on the merits of the case or patent without having read and understood the patent claim being enforced is speaking from ignorance.
As far as I can see, whoever at the Patent Office approved patent 6,411,947 was egregiously ignorant of prior art in the field.
That’s how the system works.
Who was doing the following before 1998?
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.
I did all of that in cc:Mail prior to 1998.
Cool. We can sue Polaris IP via a huge class action suit for their role in spam that costs businesses many billions of dollars.
“A method for automatically interpreting an electronic message, including 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. The method for automatically interpreting an electronic message may also include the step of retrieving one or more predetermined responses corresponding to the interpretation of the electronic message from a repository for automatic delivery to the source.”
“Filed: April 2, 1998”
Send mail has been able to do this for years! before the patent was filed
Yes the USPO grants tens of thousands of crappy patents chalked full of prior art, and obviousness. These are often granted to someone who has no intention of using this only so sue others who have been doing it for *years*. Or they are bought up by existing software companies to stifle competition and make it harder for small business to enter.
Finally the claim is made and either (a) The company doing something which has been standard practice in software for decades has to fork up money or (b) The courts are forced to do the patent offices job
In either case the Lawyers get rich, the tax payers spend money, and small business is usually hurt.
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