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Re: Microsoft Patent - Re: New Internet Draft: draft-duerst-archived-at-00.txt

2004-03-11 08:24:32

Actually, if all the claims follow the abstract and refer to "electronic messaging" rather than email, then I would think netnews *itself* is prior art that should be reasonably easy to document! -- NB

On Mar 10, 2004, at 10:00 AM, Hector Santos wrote:


Martin,   I think Microsoft just patent this.

Ridiculous!


United States Patent 6,704,772
Ahmed ,   et al. March 9, 2004

Thread based email

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing electronic messaging services to multiple
users by storing a single copy of an electronic message at a central
location and notifying recipients of the stored single copy. An electronic message includes a distribution list and a message content. A distribution list identifying multiple recipients causes prior art systems to duplicate the entire message for each recipient, placing potentially large demands on
both processing power and storage space. In contrast, the systems and
methods disclosed herein store a single copy or a limited number of copies of an electronic message addressed to multiple recipients and provide each recipient with a relatively small notification. In addition to providing information regarding content and origin, the notification also provides access to the stored message. Furthermore, the methods and systems also aid in organizing replies to electronic messages. Replies are associated with an
initial message through a message identifier. The association helps to
organize electronic messages by subject and provides context without
requiring an author to duplicate the content of the initial message with the
reply.

Inventors: Ahmed; Muhammad A. (Seattle, WA); Alam; Mohammad Shabbir
(Bellevue, WA)
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)
Appl. No.: 399417
Filed: September 20, 1999


PS: I don't know about others but this was already prior art on our product where we used email distribution into a single mssage folder for multiple user participation. This is used everyday for our technical support staff as one example. Nothing elegant about this. A EMAIL <---> NEWS interface!


--
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com




----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Duerst" <duerst(_at_)w3(_dot_)org>
To: <ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 4:13 PM
Subject: New Internet Draft: draft-duerst-archived-at-00.txt



Dear email specialists,

I have recently submitted a proposal for a new email header,
the Archived-At header. You can find it at
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-duerst-archived-at-00.txt

It defines a new email header, Archived-At:, to provide a direct
link to the archived form of an individual mail message. We use
this extremely successfully (currently in the form X-Archived-At)
at W3C.

I would highly appreciate any feedback and comments on this proposal.
Please make sure you copy me, as I'm not subscribed to this list.


Regards,    Martin.