We do encourage the disclosure of any known intellectual property rights in
accordance with the ASRG's interim IPR policy. However, we also discussed on
the list a while ago that this is not the appropriate forum to debate the
validity of any IPR claims.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob(_at_)wyman(_dot_)us]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:41 PM
To: 'david nicol'
Cc: asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: RE: [Asrg] US Spam patents: Partial list
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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