A handful of Apple engineers have applied for a software patent application (US20140047043) on the idea of adding a proprietary protocol to request new disposable email addresses automatically from an email client.
Publication Number: US20140047043
Title: Disposable Email Address Generation and Mapping to a Regular Email Account
Assignee: Apple, Inc.
The application can be seen here.
Here is the text of one of the independent claims followed by one of its dependent claims:
Claim 11. A non-transitory program storage device, readable by one or more programmable control devices, comprising instructions stored thereon for causing one or more of the programmable control devices to:
- Allocate a disposable email address, the disposable email address independent of a non-disposable email address;
- Associate the disposable email address with the non-disposable email address;
- Associate a context information with the disposable email address, external to the disposable email address;
- Associate an expiration information with the disposable email address, external to the disposable email address;
- Receive an email message addressed to the disposable email address;
- Rewrite the email message, replacing the disposable email address with the non-disposable email address;
- Provide the email message to an email client;
- Provide the context information to the email client;
- Receive a reply to the email message; and
- Rewrite the reply, replacing the non-disposable email address with the disposable email address.
Claim 13. The program storage device of claim 11, wherein the instructions stored thereon further comprise instructions for causing one or more of the programmable control devices to:
- Provide the context information with the email message to the email client.
Here's the abstract for what it's worth:
An integrated system allows easily creating and using disposable email addresses. The disposable email address is created by an email server, which manages correspondence using the disposable email address to avoid exposing the associated non-disposable email address. Context information may be associated with a disposable email address, where the context information is not visible in email sent using the disposable email address. Expiration information may also be associated with the disposable email address, where the expiration information defines conditions that cause the disposable email address to expire. Should the disposable address be misused, the associated context may allow a user to recognize what correspondent exposed the disposable address to misuse.
It seems to me that adding a 'request creation of new e-mail address'-protocol to the known concept of disposable e-mail addresses is not particularly novel, looking for specific references.
Can anyone help find Prior Art (prior to 8/13/12) on this patent application US20140047043 to provide to the US Patent Office.