Fighting malware and spam

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.

31 March 2004

Tags: virus