Patent Problem May Slow Anti-Spam Solution

from the just-wonderful dept

As if the upcoming standards battle over authenticated email wasn't enough, now someone is claiming that Microsoft stole his patent-pending sender authentication concept, which he also named CallerID for email. He's also accusing them of trademark violation, which may be about as far as his claim can realistically go. First off, without a granted patent, his claims are a bit weak, but even if he got that patent, it seems pretty clear by the fact that just about everyone seems to be coming up with the same idea independently that this is hardly an original idea. The guy in question, realizing that no lawyers seem willing to take on his case, is planning, instead to go after lots of smaller companies to "build up a war chest." Great. Yet another person claiming to hold intellectual property who will now use it to sue other companies that are actually trying to innovate and who clearly never "stole" his ideas, but came up with them independently. Apparently, this is what the Patent and Trademark Office consider "innovation."

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