Patent for Postini

Postini wins U.S. patent for email filtering

Managed email security company Postini has

been granted a U.S. patent for email filtering technology

.

According to the patent, any system which intercepts mail, filtering viruses and spam messages from the inbox and then sends what’s left to the intended recipient – methodology in widespread use across the anti-spam and anti-virus industries – is using Postini’s intellectual property.

Specifically, U.S. patent #6,650,890 (which was filed in 1999) covers:

• The use of a modified DNS (Domain Name Server) address to redirect email to an email preprocessing service

• The preprocessing of email redirected through this method to intercept spam

• The ability of customers, including companies, departmental groups and individual end-users, to configure their own protection profiles for the purpose of customized filtering

• The ability to selectively redirect email to alternate destinations

• The use of a quarantine area to hold suspect email without delivery

• The ability of end-users to gain web access to individualized quarantine areas in order to review suspect email.

While the methodology covered by the Patent is used widely in the anti-spam and email filtering industry, Postini founder Scott Petry told

The Register

the company has no immediate plans to try to enforce the patent – but was unwilling to speculate about any such activity in the future.

Posted on 31 March 2004 by

Virus Bulletin