Email Hosting: RPost Patents Email Tracking Technology

by David Gitonga, TMCnet Contributing Writer

A patent technology that covers more than 40 billion messages a year is set to be licensed by RPost, the inventor of the Registered Email Services. The patent (USPTO 8, 161,104) is comprehensive and includes the tracking of email openings by means of embedded Web links, a technology commonly used by marketers to measure email campaign success. According to the company, email marketers, hosting providers, social media and cloud-based businesses will need to comply, otherwise the company intends to vigorously pursue infringement proceedings.
Nearly every email marketing service, social network service and task management platform uses the technology as part of the basic analytical offering.

According to RPost CEO, Zafar Khan, the link tracking patent is based upon technology specifications submitted in 1999 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by RPost.

Khan added in a statement, “To date, RPost holds the most complete set of patents around email tracking and proof. We intended to vigorously assert our intellectual property rights to this new patent; and the 35 other patents we have obtained.”

The technology has been in use since the early 2000s within RPost’s Registered Email Services and currently operates in eight languages worldwide.

In an effort to defend its intellectual property, lawsuits by the company claiming infringement had been brought forward in California Federal Courts, Texas and Virginia in 2011 against Adobe Echosign, ZixCorp, RightSignature, Swiss Post, Docusign and Farmers Insurance just to mention a few. Some of these lawsuits are set for hearings that are slated to take place in 2013.

RPost has set the standard for document services and legal electronic messaging for compliant message encryption, proof of delivery and legal electronic signatures. Its technological innovations are used by the U.S. government and other international agencies, as well various global F500 companies. It has also been endorsed by the American Bar Association and won the World Mail Award for security in 2011.