I'm not a lawyer, but from what I see it basically wraps up scanning with a focus on bayes - I always thought Microsoft had invented that! =) I don't get claim #17 about repeatedly changing thresholds, but all in all this should not be something for SA to worry about, not only because of their involvment with SA, its open-source nature etc., but most importantly because of the timing: SA's Bayes.pm dates back to October 2002; whereas the patent was filed in December 2002.
If you want to read it: =) http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,732,157.WKU.&OS=PN/6,732,157&RS=PN/6,732,157 Cheers, Chris > Marc Perkel wrote: >> How does this affect Spam Assassin? > > I believe that the Apache Software Foundation lawyers have been asked to > look into the question. Working in high tech, I've always been given the > advice that in situations involving patents it is a good idea for the > developers to let the lawyers do the investigation. That seems > counterintuitive, but it is based on some of the legal details of patent > law as it affects people doing possibly related technical work. > > So for now I'll wait to hear what lawyers have to say and not even read > the patent. > > -- sidney > -- SpamIntelligence for Outlook(tm): Beta now available at www.fatorange.com
