SONY just received a patent for a system intended “to make the recipient of electronic mail quickly and surely take actions desired by the sender.”
Abstract: Receiving apparatus and method, sending apparatus and method, recording medium, and communication system:
Disclosed is a receiving apparatus and method, a sending apparatus and method, recording medium, and a communication system for sending or receiving electronic mail. In operatively associated with a command for opening an electronic mail message, a syntax analysis module extracts a script attached to the electronic mail message as an attachment file and analyzes the syntax of the extracted script. An execution module executes processing corresponding to the data accompanying the script or an input event. An output module controls the outputting of the results of this processing. With this configuration, a sender of electronic mail is allowed to make its recipient to quickly and securely take actions desired by the sender. –United States Patent 7,016,940; 21 March 2006.
SONY engineers envisioned a method whereby you could, say, send a dinner invitation, and the recipient would be forced to respond in a timely fashion. Thus, when you opened a text message with a script attached, the program activated might enter into an endless loop, like, “Are you coming?”, “Are you coming?”, “Are you coming?”, “Are you coming?”, until you responded properly.
It looked like a great idea when they submitted the patent application, back in 2001. Microsoft Outlook and other email clients were outfitted to automatically execute VBscript, Javascript, etc., when messages were opened. Originally, message scripts did everything from making animated bears dance to alerting senders that their messages had been read.
Unfortunately, the subsequent flood of malware activated by opening script-infested messages brought the the whole concept to a virtual standstill.
Today, few responsible senders spew email with attached scripts… And even fewer recipients open them. In fact, most are protected by network-based content filters that automatically strip or disable potentially dangerous attachments.
Upshot:While SONY’s process is obviously useful for carefully restricted environments, SONY will have a heck of a time collecting patent royalties from all those malware generators.
Although the patent may no longer be hot, hot, hot today… times change. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
10 comments
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April 17th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Robert Claypool
What? Were they going to make you have to force quit the entire application if you didn’t want to respond?
April 18th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Anonymous Reader
Prior art, obvious? Take your pick.
Who knows! Maybe we can get Senators in the Judiciary who are meeting this month on IP issues, to look at the as another excuse to ban software and business method patents.
This patent should never have been issued.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:06 am
BJ Gillette
“Were they going to make you have to force quit the entire application if you didn’t want to respond?”
Simply disabling scripts undoes the whole process.
By its granting in 2006, the patent seems almost humorous, especially for the purposes stated in the application, like insisting on response to party invitations, or updating an Othello board.
Intervening security crises have changed both users’ and managers’ thinking about what’s useful, allowable and tolerable.
What a difference 5 years makes.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:13 am
BJ Gillette
RE: “Prior art, obvious? Take your pick … This patent should never have been issued.”
If it was possible to hug you across the Internet, I would.
Unfortunately, this has spun out of control.
Even companies that refrained in the past are now patenting anything that moves just to maintain their ability to use it without paying blood money.
USPTO needs a good whuppin’.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:15 am
Sean McManus
There is a role for this, in a closed corporate environment where you can control the client software and how it is configured. It could be used for example to force employees to respond in a timely manner to urgent customer service requests. I’m not saying it’s desirable, and obviously nobody would choose to install it on a public-facing email account. But this does appear to be a patent with commercial value, even now.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:57 am
BJ Gillette
Hi Sean.
Can’t disagree with a single word… not one.
In today’s Wall Street Journal (19 April), Holman Jenkins noted Metabolite’s patent for discerning how blood responds to Vitamin B deficiency: “Had Isaac Newton been granted such a patent for gravity, nobody would have been able to fall down without paying him royalties.”
Software patents are just as evil. As one of my colleagues said, “How do you know if you’re violating somebody’s patent? You’re programming.”
Which is, again, why the Patent Office needs a good whuppin’.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Wade
This is a good example of what is wrong with the patent system.
While I know Sony would never get to collect royalties, the god’s honest truth of the matter why should they even be able too. Having an idea and running to the patent office before anyone else has the idea is a flawed system to me. Those countless spammers did not go look at the Sony patent and to figure out what they wanted to do with spam and scripts. They had those ideas all on their own.
I am perfectly fine with the guy who invented the baseball to get a patent, but I don’t want to see patents for how to throw a baseball fastball and another for the slider, etc… Sony never should have been granted a patent.
This system of “get rich schemes” and a race to the patent office just makes me sick.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:44 am
BJ Gillette
Hi Wade.
You, sir, are preaching to the choir. AAAAAmen.
April 20th, 2006 at 3:05 am
K. R. Cronin
What is it that possesses corporations to patent every single idea they can possibly come up with to annoy users?
April 20th, 2006 at 11:50 am
BJ Gillette
Nowadays, if you don’t patent your code, someone down the road will be suing you down the road for using it. Unbelievable.