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The list of defendants seems to make little sense given the subject of the suit.

First you have technology companies that might reasonably be involved in email processing, although Microsoft is conspicuous by its absence:

3Com Corporation
Alcatel-Lucent Holding, Inc.
AOL, Inc.
Apple Inc.
Dell, Inc.
Ericsson, Inc.
Google
Hewlett-Packard Company
HP Enterprise Services, LLC
International Business Machines Corporation;
McAfee, Inc.
Perot Systems Corporation
Research in Motion Corporation
Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software, Inc.
Symantec Corporation
Yahoo!, Inc.

Then financial companies that seem unrelated to the issue:

American International Group, Inc. (AIG)
Bank of America Corporation
Capital One Auto Finance, Inc.
Capital One Financial Corporation
Citigroup, Inc.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Wells Fargo & Company

Then every possible permutation of J.C. Penny, but no other major retailers:

JCPenney Co.
J.C. Penney Corporation, Inc.
J.C. Penney Life Insurance Company
J.C. Penney Mexico, Inc.
J.C. Penney Reinsurance Company
JCP Publications Corp.

And finally, stuff that seems to make no sense at all:

Cinemark, Inc.
Cinemark Holdings, Inc.
Crossmark, Inc.
Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Inc.
Frito-Lay, Inc.
Frito-Lay North America, Inc.
Rent-A-Center, Inc.


There seems to be only one common thread... Rent-A-Center, Dr. Pepper, Crossmark, J.C. Penny, Frito-Lay, and Cinemark are all headquartered in Plano, Texas.

Very curious. What the hell are they trying to do here?
 
You appear to be presuming that once granted, a patent is inviolate. It would hardly be the first time a patent was found to have been granted in error, and revoked.

Merely pointing out that at the time it was deemed non-obvious. People seem to think there's no argument to the contrary. Apparently, someone thought so.
 
some of the posters responses in this post really shock me.

The person feels that he has a case, he has a patent, so he is suing the companies he feels used his patent.

He is trying to protect what he feels is his idea, yet some of you are bashing him for it.

Let the courts decide if he has a case or not, it's not our job to decide that.
 
some of the posters responses in this post really shock me.

The person feels that he has a case, he has a patent, so he is suing the companies he feels used his patent.

He is trying to protect what he feels is his idea, yet some of you are bashing him for it.

Let the courts decide if he has a case or not, it's not our job to decide that.

couldn't agree more...
 
There's a very good doc out there about intellectual property/copyright etc called RIP. It deals primarily on mash-ups & sampling in the music biz but also gets into copyrights & lawsuits like this. Since the beginning of time humanity has progressed only because the sharing & developing of ideas. Only now since corporations lobbied for protectionist laws, patents & the right to sue over them have we seen such battles. Who knows what positive developments have been halted or slowed because of patents & copyrights. It also deals w/ the Mickey Mouse law where Disney sidestepped their main character from becoming public domain by lobbying to have the laws changed & terms extended....several times. Companies like Monsanto patenting life...medicine not making it onto the market because they weren't profitable or the wrong company held the patent. Where would music be today if it couldn't be shared or developed like early blues were...technology is heading down a bizarre corridor where it seems these patent lawsuits are more profitable than the actual product...and definitely more risky. Patent everything then sue like a mofo!

Check it out if you get a chance.
interesting... i just may check it out. thanx
 
Huh?

I read the patent information at the patft.uspto.gov website.

I think some of these programs available in 1993/94 were already
doing what this patent claims to be a new invention. (data mining, filtering, running external commands, address aliasing, archive searching, local lookup, referring to/saving to external sources, referencing black lists, etc.)

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/archive-servers/faq/

So, maybe this guy thinks he has the patent on using software to extrapolate information about a person from their email/posts and generate a database with that information. This would encompass all companies that use database collection / target specific marketing, which might explain why non software companies are named in the suit he is filing.

Just a thought....
 
The point I was trying to make is that in today's e-mail realm, there is probably little to no patent infringement remaining. In other words, he's probably suing over past damages, not current damages, and probably won't be able to attain a license fee for future spam filtration. That was simply my point, albeit not clearly worded. It should be noted however that I am not an expert in email or the current generation spam filtration systems, so take that conjecturing with a grain of salt.

I suspect his mostly irrelevant patent plays no role in any modern day spam blocking technology.

I don't know if it ever did. It seems to almost be some bastardized concept of a whitelist, which is something that existed for e-mail before his patent claim.

His claims are likely not legitimate and he is just hoping to get some people to settle with him. His specific patents here are not useful in many ways, and I don't know of any period of time where such methods have ever been used in any significant manner to deal with spam e-mail or anything else for that matter.

It sounds like he would have a better case suing virus makers.
 
Software Patents should come with Working Code

While it's true that inventors may have problems coming up with prototypes for patents; that should not apply to software. If you file a software patent, you must submit the software to prove your idea works.
 
Patents should be like trademarks - if you don't defend them then you lose them.
 
While it's true that inventors may have problems coming up with prototypes for patents; that should not apply to software. If you file a software patent, you must submit the software to prove your idea works.

Why? There is seldom any situation where a patent issues and the problem with the patent is that the idea wouldn't work. There is a basic utility requirement, and the patent examiners are pretty good at catching ideas that have no usefulness (because they don't work). Your idea solves a problem that doesn't exist.

The issue with software patents is that they tend to be obvious or anticipated by prior art, and even where they are not obvious they tend to patent abstract ideas (which are not patentable subject matter).

Patents should be like trademarks - if you don't defend them then you lose them.

Sigh. "Laches." "Equitable estoppel." Look it up.
 
InNova Patent Licensing is just asking for trouble. Trying to take on Apple, Google, HP?

What the f.u.c.k. is happening to America...
 
InNova Patent Licensing is just asking for trouble. Trying to take on Apple, Google, HP?

What the f.u.c.k. is happening to America...

what is happening to america is that corporate america is controlling what we do, what we see.

Instead of getting upset at the little guy for trying to get a piece of the pie he believes he should get, get mad at the big guys for always bullying the small guy into submission!

Seriously instead of asking what is wrong with america, we should be asking what happened to our freedoms
 
what is happening to america is that corporate america is controlling what we do, what we see.

Instead of getting upset at the little guy for trying to get a piece of the pie he believes he should get, get mad at the big guys for always bullying the small guy into submission!

Seriously instead of asking what is wrong with america, we should be asking what happened to our freedoms

The patent laws haven't changed much since Thomas Jefferson ran the patent office. He knew a few things about freedoms.

Nothing to see here.
 
Here we go again with all the patent experts. Just because someone patents something but doesn't execute duress not relive them of rights, they might not have the means
 
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