A new patent battle is brewing -- this time over Microsoft"s claim over Caller ID for E-Mail. F. Scott Deaver, owner of Failsafe Designs, says Microsoft is guilty of the "outright theft" of his product name and intellectual property (IP), and will seek legal and financial redress from the Redmond, Wash., software giant and anyone else that uses his technology that verifies e-mail is coming from the domain it claims.
If that happens, it"s sure to put a monkey wrench in the deployment of the Sender ID specification, which is a combination of Microsoft"s Caller ID for E-Mail specification and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), worldwide to combat one of the avenues used by spammers. The technology used in Caller ID for E-Mail is part of a specification called Sender ID currently under review by an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group as a proposed Internet standard to eliminate the use of spoofed e-mail addresses found in many of today"s spam messages.