This Patent Application received a non-final rejection by the US Patent Office! An initial rejection is part of the typical course of a patent application.
The rejection was based in part on prior art found by Ask Patents community below! The first two references cited by the Patent Examiner were found by Ask Patents.
Thanks to YOU, the Ask Patents community, overly-broad claims have at least been narrowed. Follow @askpatents to block more overly-broad patent applications.
AN OVERBROAD PATENT ON self-destructing email - This application from AT&T seeks to patent the idea of...electronic mail which deletes itself after a specific period of time has elapsed and warns sender if it recipient is outside the sender's email domain (where self-destruction presumably cannot be assured)! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents. Follow @askpatents on twitter to help.
QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before 1/9/2002 that discusses:
- self-destructing email
If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual.
EXTRA CREDIT - A reference to anything that meets all of the criteria to the question above AND ALSO prohibits forwarding or copying the email into another application (such as a word processor) or which warns the sender if it is being sent outside to a recipient outside the sender's email domain
TITLE: Self-destructing email
Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method for sending email which identifies a time period after which the email destroys itself.
- Publication Number: US 20130159436 A1
- Application Number: US 13/690,555
- Assignee: AT&T
- Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating 1/9/2002
- Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through 12/17/2013
Claim 1 requires each and every step below:
A method for transmitting self-destructing electronic mail messages comprising:
receiving a request, at an electronic mail server, from a sender to send a self-destructing electronic mail message, the request identifying a time period after which the self-destructing electronic mail message is to be destroyed;
sending a security warning to the sender when an electronic mail address of an intended recipient of the self-destructing electronic mail message is located beyond a home domain of the sender;
sending the self-destructing electronic mail message to the electronic mail address of the intended recipient in response to input from the sender responsive to the security warning;
4.deleting any instances of the self-destructing electronic mail message that are being stored at the electronic mail server after the sending and after expiration of the time period.
In English this means:
A method for sending self-destructing email, comprising:
Sender specifies time period after which email self-destructs
Warn sender if recipient email address is outside home domain (where self-destruction presumably cannot be assured)
Send the self-destructing email
Delete the email after expiration of the time period specified by sender
Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to 1/9/2002
You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming self-destructing email which is prohibited from being forwarded or copied into an application
"email which is time-limited from the Applicant"
What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.
Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.