Mike,

I know of at least two companies that used this software to deliver faxes via e-mail to national and international networks of users.  It was not a single PC receiving faxes into an inbox, it was incoming faxes distributed to one or more e-mail addresses where the e-mail was read nationally or internationally.

I believe there were installations with more than 1 incoming fax modem, but that's a factual issue that would have to be checked with the folks who managed the installations.

On a separate note, Apple also had a fax modem circa 1990.  I built a broadcast fax system that took a SCO box and a bank of serial ports and did customized cover pages and content from MS Word doc e-mail to an address (does anyone remember UUCP) and faxed to a list of people.  I can't for the life of me remember if I had incoming support on the system as well.  But this should cover the issues relating to e-mail to an address for faxing.

Remember also that you cannot patent the automation of a manual process.  That means that if I can do something by hand, you cannot get a patent on merely having a machine follow the same steps.  This was one of the ways that a patent of real-time trading from a spreadsheet was knocked out in Canada.

Thanks,

David

Mike M wrote:
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 03:49:00PM -0700, David Pollak wrote:
  
Folks,

Black and White Software was selling software that monitored a fax modem 
on NeXT computers and forwarded incoming faxes to e-mail addresses back 
in 1992.  If you need more information, I can dig up advertisements for 
the product from NeXTWorld magazine.  I used the product (and know other 
who did as well.)  It seems to be prior art to the fax via e-mail patents.
    

Read the patents carefully because the thing you describe above is for a
computer and not a national network.  It is these minor modifications
that get patented.  If you think of a major idea and some else improves
it in a minor way and patents the improvement, guess what?, you can't use the
improvement without the patent holder's permission.  That'll chap you,
won't it?

  
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