I searched through US Patent database for Microsoft applications in
the last several years and there are lots and lots of them and some to
me look similar to techniques in use by some open-source projects. This
tactic by such a large company is very disturbing because they know that
open-source movement in general is based on individual collaborative work
and they do not have the money and resources to fight microsoft patents.
In any case, if you want take a look yourself:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.html
enter "AN/Microsoft" for search parameter
Also abstract of this one application in particular I want to post here,
to me this looks like what Spamassasin is all about:
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United States Patent Application: 20040139165
Assignee Name and Adress: Microsoft Corporation
Abstract
A method that enables multiple spam detection solutions to be deployed in
a manageable and rational manner to determine if a message is spam is
presented. A framework invokes anti-spam filters to analyze the message
and return confidence levels of whether a message is spam. The framework
evaluates the highest confidence level against a set of defined
thresholds. If the highest confidence level is greater than the highest
threshold set by the administrator, the action specified for the highest
threshold is taken. The highest confidence level is also compared against
all thresholds and the action associated with the nearest threshold that
has been exceeded is taken
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William Leibzon, Elan Networks:
mailto: william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net
Anti-Spam Research Worksite:
http://www.elan.net/~william/asrg/