Apple and Google are among 36 total corporate defendants in the patent
infringement suit, announced Wednesday by the Lanier Law Firm. The
complaint was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of Texas in Marshall.
The suit deals with U.S. Patent No. 6,018,761, related to technology
that is used to differentiate between regular e-mail messages and
unwanted advertising spam. The patent is owned by mathematician Robert
Uomini, founder of InNova. It was filed with the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office nearly 15 years ago.
The patent is the only one currently available for
licensing on the company's official website.
Awarded in 2000, the patent is entitled "System for Adding to Electronic
Mail Messages Information Obtained from Sources External to the
Electronic Mail Transport Process." It describes a system that could
obtain information about a message, even if the message does not include
information such as name, address or telephone number. A database of
this contextual information could be used to sort e-mails.
News 1 year ago

