[Spambayes] egregious patents on anti-spam techniques

[Kaitlin Duck Sherwood]

Gang --

I've recently become aware of two egregious patent applications 
related to spam fighting.  The first one looks like it might 
conceivably cover Bayesian filtering.  It would be good if someone 
more familiar with Bayesian/classifier/machine learning theory could 
check it out and perhaps challenge ("protest") the application.

The second is on using whitelists, blacklists, challenge-response, 
and digital signatures to combat spam.  I plan to protest that one 
myself.  I have killer prior art for whitelists, blacklists, and 
challenge-response (see p.82 of _Stopping Spam_ by Schwartz & 
Garfinkel, 1998).  I do not know of prior art for using digital 
signatures in the service of stopping spam.  If you know of prior art 
for that, you might want to issue a protest and/or send me the info.

(If you send me prior art on digital signatures/spam, please
+ read the patent claims first
+ put PRIOR ART in the subject line.)

I'm going to Japan for ten days, leaving Friday morning, and will not 
have email connectivity then.

To protest a patent, you need to file prior art (within 60 days!) 
with the patent office.  See:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/1900.htm
and
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0600_610.htm#sect610

Patent application on adaptive spam filtering:
<http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=3&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=email.TTL.&OS=TTL/email&RS=TTL/email> 


Patent application on whitelists, blacklists, challenge-response, and 
digital signatures used in spam-fighting:
<http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p
=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='20030009698'.PGNR.&OS=DN/20
030009698&RS=DN/20030009698>