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RE: [Asrg] US Spam patents: Partial list
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@wyman.us]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:41 PM
> To: 'david nicol'
> Cc: asrg@ietf.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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