David Nicol wrote:
why isn't anon.penet.fi prior art?
RTFM... Anon.penet.fi is explicitly discussed in the patent. The
distinction would appear to be that this patent relies on computation to
generate the "alias" addresses while other systems have traditionaly
relied on translation tables stored in databases. In fact, the well
known case of anon.penet.fi being forced to disclose one of their
translations to the police is cited as a problem with existing art that
this invention attempts to fix.
For those not familiar with long closed anon.penet.fi site, I
suggest that you read:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/sep/helmers.html
Personally, I think a much better question on prior art is why
the patent examiner didn't consider US Patent 6,356,935 and several
other similar systems to be relevant to this application. I think the
examiners may have been too focused on "anonymity" in the process of
examination while not realizing that there were a number of other
problem spaces which can be addressed with substantially the same
method. The solutions to both the "anonymity" problem and the "spam"
problem involve constructing "alias" addresses which are based on "real"
addresses. The methods are identical even though the reason for
deploying them and the words used to describe them are different.
The problem here is that in software, the distinction between
what appear to be distinct methods is often simply the way you think
about the methods -- not anything inherent to the method itself. Thus, a
single method can be described multiple times with completely distinct
vocabulary. This sort of problem is not as common in the realm of
"traditional" patents.
bob wyman
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