Roy Badami wrote:
"The email message's originator address is taken from one of the
following five sources, shown in decreasing order of preference:
1. Resent-from: 4. Sender:
2. From: 5. Envelope From:
3. Resent-sender:"
What about it?
The PRA algorithm isn't arbitrary; it's based on the RFC(2)822
definitions of the fields.
So let me get this straight. RFC 2822 (section 3.6.2) defines "Sender"
as "mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the
message" which would be the party that actually put the email message
into the initial SMTP transaction. The same RFC (section 3.6.6)
represents "one individual" who "resends a message on behalf of one or
more others".
Now, I am an SMTP developer and after reading the RFC I want to find out
who put the original message into the mail system. In order to determine
the actual party who sent the original message according to the RFC I
would have to look for the "Sender" field. If it is not present, then
the "From" header is used since the RFC states (section 3.6.2) "if the
originator of the message can be indicated by a single mailbox and the
author and transmitter are identical, the "Sender:" field SHOULD NOT be
used." However, since the same RFC states that "Resent" fields are
basically the same as the regular "Sender" and "From" fields in cases
where the email is forwarded and re-introduced into the email system, I
would have to parse "Resent-Sender" first, then "Resent-From", and only
after that the regular "Sender" and "From" fields.
Now if all of this is stated in the RFC directly, what exactly is the
IPR that is being claimed here? This seems to me explicit in the RFC itself.
The above algorithm makes no sense to me. The fact that someone has
used it for something in the past is not a justification for using it
here.
I will agree with you that it will not sufficient for our purposes where
we care about the original party who put the email into the email
system, not the original author of the message, but it might be good
enough for prior art.
Yakov