Commtouch, makers of enterprise and ISP level anti-spam solutions, announced this week that it has acquired a patent which describes “a system that monitors live e-mail, identifies certain characteristics of the e-mail message that appear in more than one e-mail, and blocks other e-mails with the same pattern”.

Holy Infringement, Batman! That sure sounds like more than a few anti-spam products out there.

Commtouch has been quoted as saying that they “will begin offering licenses of the patent to other anti-spam companies; the starting date for the licensing push and the terms have not been decided.”

Although Commtouch’s revenues have more than doubled in this past quarter from $160k in the previous quarter to $358k in Q2/2004, still, in the burgeoning anti-spam market, demanding licensing fees from competitors may be considered a lucrative sideline. Certainly owning what Commtouch describes as “the earliest and most important patent in the field” should make them a more attractive target for acquisition.

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