Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer protocol implementing – Computer-to-computer data transfer regulating
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-24
2001-12-18
Lim, Krisna (Department: 2758)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer protocol implementing
Computer-to-computer data transfer regulating
C709S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06332164
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for transmitting messages via computer networks, and more particularly to a method and system for controlling the transmission of an electronic message sent by a computer over a computer network.
Computer messaging, termed E-mail, is well known, and has become a ubiquitous tool for business in the 1990's. With the advent of the Internet, E-mail has become a tool for use by advertisers and others, as well, who often blanket users with undesired “junk” E-mail similar to junk mail. In fact, the technology exists for advertisers to completely overwhelm the Internet and users with electronic mail should several advertisers desire to attempt to reach all users of the Internet at once with either large graphics intensive files or multimedia files.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a method and a system for controlling the transmission of electronic mail so that users do not get bombarded with electronic mail they do not desire, thereby limiting the ability of E-mail senders to broadcast messages to all users over the Internet.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention solves this problem by placing control of the delivery of the E-mail in the hands of the recipient of the E-mail rather than in the hands of the sender. As a result, the present invention automatically limits the transmission of E-mail to those who are actually interested in it.
According to the present invention, a user is notified that he currently has an E-mail addressed to him regarding some particular advertisement. In this case, if the user is not interested, the user can avoid having that E-mail message sent to him. This reduces the traffic of E-mail over the Internet because only those messages that someone desires to receive will be transmitted over the Internet. This prevents valuable Internet transmission resources from being wasted on E-mail that the recipient will simply discard.
Furthermore, as a result of the present invention, information is now available as to how many users were actually interested in the advertisement, whereas prior to the present invention no advertiser knows how many users actually read the E-mail, but only those who took the time to respond to it. This added information enables the advertiser to tailor future advertisements to attempt to capture the users who were interested but for some reason did not respond, or to broaden the appeal of the advertisement itself Moreover, the present invention enables advertisers to know how much of the E-mail was read, not simply the fact that it was received.
In addition, as a result of the present invention, advertisers can create larger, more creative E-mail messages without worrying that they will overwhelm the Internet by attempting to send a large file to all users at once, which otherwise might generate more ill-will towards the advertiser than the advertisement justifies. The net result is that the action of each user filters out the messages in which they are not interested, thus requiring transmission of messages only in the case where the recipient is actually interested in the content of the message.
Therefore, according to the present invention, a method for controlling a transfer of an electronic message over a computer network, includes the steps of: a) receiving an electronic message from an originator to be transmitted to a recipient over the computer network; b) storing a complete version of the electronic message in a mail server; c) forwarding a brief message to the recipient indicating that the electronic message exists and asking if the recipient desires to receive a parsed version of the electronic message; d) transmitting the parsed version of the electronic message to the recipient upon receiving an indication that the recipient desires to receive the parsed version in response to the request in step c); and e) formatting the parsed version of the electronic message to include a mail server address where the complete version of the electronic message is stored.
One particularly advantageous implementation of the above method includes the step of including a hyperlink in the parsed version of the electronic message to a location where the complete version of the electronic message is stored.
Another particularly advantageous implementation of the above method includes the step of including either an address of a location where an applet is stored, which applet is required to read the complete electronic message, or a hyperlink to that location.
According to the present invention, the complete version of the electronic message is only transmitted if the recipient indicates a willingness to receive the complete version of the electronic message.
Yet another particularly advantageous implementation of the above method includes the step of maintaining a table of users who are to receive the electronic message and indicating which users have retrieved the complete version of the electronic message from the mail server.
Another particularly advantageous implementation of the above method includes the step of deleting the complete version of the electronic message from the mail server when all of the users in the table have either retrieved the complete version of the electronic message from the mail server or have deleted the parsed version of the electronic message from their mail server.
According to the present invention, a mail server for controlling a transfer of an electronic message over a computer network includes a processor and a storage device. The processor is programmed to perform the following functions for each electronic message: (i) creating a new message with a header from the electronic message and an address of a location of a complete version of the electronic message in the first mail server; (ii) associating a table with each electronic message to capture a message delivery time stamp, and a granularity of the electronic message read; (iii) generating a report on all successful deliveries of each complete electronic version of the electronic message; and (iv) transmitting a confirmation transaction to the sender upon request by the sender. The storage device stores the complete version of all electronic messages until they are read.
According to the present invention, a method for transmitting an electronic message over the Internet, includes the steps of: a) mailing an electronic message from the sender to a first mail server, which message is addressed to a recipient; b) storing a complete version of the electronic message in the first server, wherein the first mail server is a nearest mail server to the sender in the recipient's network; c) polling the recipient to determine if the recipient is willing to receive a parsed version of the electronic message; d) delivering the complete version of the electronic message to the recipient's mail server if the recipient's response to the poll in step c) is no.
One particularly advantageous implementation of the above method includes the step e) of performing the following substeps if the recipient's response to the poll in step c) is yes: (i) creating the parsed version of the electronic message, which parsed version includes the same header as the complete version as well as a hyper-link to a storage location where the complete version of the electronic message is stored, along with any applet required to read the complete version of the electronic message; and (ii) making a table entry of all recipients of the electronic message.
Another particularly advantageous implementation of the above method occurs when the step e) further includes the substeps of: (iii) sending the parsed version of the electronic message as a regular electronic message to the recipient's mail server; (iv) delivering, when the recipient logs on the recipient's mail server, the parsed version of the electronic message; and (v) sending a transaction to the mail server from the client to delete the recipient's entr
AT&T Corp.
Lim Krisna
LandOfFree
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