ANTI-SPAM EMAIL U.S. PATENT ISSUED

U.S. Patent No. 6,650,890 was granted November 18, 2003 to managed e-mail security company Postini.   According to a Network World Fusion article, "if enforced, the patent, which covers an e-mail "pre-processing service" could grant Postini legal ownership of a wide range of anti-spam and e-mail security methods."

The patent describes a variety of methods for providing messaging services in an e-mail network.  In particular, claim 1 provides for:

A method of providing electronic messaging services in an email network comprising a sending email server and a destination email server, wherein emails may be delivered from the sending email server to the destination email server via an electronic message delivery path through existing Internet infrastructure, the method comprising:

(a) inserting an intermediate pre-processing service into the electronic message delivery path by changing a Domain Name Server entry containing an IP address of the destination email server to contain an IP address of the intermediate pre-processing service;

(b) receiving in the intermediate pre-processing service email message data addressed to the destination email server that has been routed through the intermediate pre-processing service; and

(c) simultaneously with receiving the email message data in the intermediate pre-processing service, processing the e-mail message data and, if the processing of the email message data instructs delivery to the destination email server, delivering the email message data to that server.

Broadly, the first claim arguably covers the basic concept of receiving an email message that has been redirected to an "intermediate pre-processing service" which processes the email message according to "message data" included in the email.  This method appears to cover Postini's email spam cleaning service. 

Surprisingly enough, Postini has been critical of lawsuits directed against spammers.