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GEN-ERIC Patent News
Tuesday, March 2, 2004

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HEADLINES (patents issued a few hours ago..)
The Disappearing Email Patent of the Day goes to an
Independent Inventor from Salt Lake City for a
Method for including a self-removing code in a self-removing email message that contains an advertisement

The Where am I Patent of the Day goes to an
Independent Inventor from Illinois for a
System for underwater GPS navigation
    Index
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NEWS
AT&T seeking $90 million from Microsoft in patent suit
http://www.tribnet.com/business/story/4784678p-4728039c.html
AT&T Corp., the nation's largest long-distance telephone company, asked a jury Wednesday to award at least $90 million in damages from Microsoft Corp., as a patent dispute over technology to speed Internet transmissions of human voices went to trial. AT&T lawyer Stephen Neal told jurors that Microsoft didn't pay royalties for using technology the phone company invented in 1981, when researchers devised a way to send voices digitally without making them sound like machines. The invention solved a problem that had stymied scientists for 50 years, Neal said.
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Judge overturns jury's $8.9 million award against Hallmark in patent case
http://newstribune.com/articles/2004/02/27/business/0227040027.txt
A federal judge has overturned a jury's $8.9 million damage award in a patent infringement suit against Hallmark Cards Inc. involving a machine that curls ribbons. In September, the jury found that Hallmark infringed patents belonging to a British company, Group One, and its owner, Fredric Goldstein. The jury also found the Kansas City-based greeting-card maker acted willfully, which could have tripled the damages in the case. But in an order signed last week, U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple said the jury should have found in Hallmark's favor because the patents in question are invalid and never should have been granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Meridian Enterprises wins $10.5M verdict against Carlson
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2004/03/01/daily12.html
St. Louis-based marketing firm Meridian Enterprises Inc. has been awarded $10.5 million by a jury in a patent infringement claim against Minneapolis-based Carlson Marketing Group Inc. Meridian alleged Carlson Marketing Group infringed on a patent for a card-based incentive program Meridian invented in the 1980s. Carlson was found guilty of willfully infringing on the patent through its Trav Pass, Global Rewards, VIP and Ready Rewards sales-incentive programs, which allow salespeople of certain clients' firms to accumulate points as they reach sales goals. Points are added to a type of credit card that the salespeople can use to buy merchandise paid for by their employer.
    Index
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PATENTS OF THE DAY

6,701,347

Method for including a self-removing code in a self-removing email message that contains an advertisement

Abstract: Methods, articles, signals, and systems are provided for providing unsolicited email message originators with default control over message removal at a message recipient's location, regardless of whether the unsolicited message has been opened. For instance, a self-removing message is designated as such by the message's originator, and a self-removal enhancement is added to conventional message content such as advertising before the message is transmitted over a computer network toward recipients. At a given recipient's location, the message is automatically deleted without additional effort by the recipient, before or after being displayed, according to the originator's instructions unless they are overridden by the recipient. Thus, the burden of removing unsolicited email messages is transferred from recipients to the message's originators.

Index

6,701,252

System for underwater GPS navigation

Abstract: Provided is a system that allows navigation by GPS while underwater by locating the antenna above water and the display below water. In one embodiment, the GPS antenna is attached to a tow-able buoy having a diver-down flag. In another embodiment, the GPS antenna is carried by the diver and released to float to the surface when the diver wishes to navigate. A preferred embodiment uses a handheld computer to display GPS data, and can be expanded to also calculate and display depth and decompression data, and to provide for further expansion and integration to include other devices.