Hellmail: New RPost Patent Covers Web Link Tracking in Billions of Emails

by Hellmail Postal NewsRPost, the inventor of Registered Email services, last week announced that it has been granted a patent (USPTO 8,161,104) which comprehensively covers the tracking of email openings by means of embedded web links – the technology widely used by marketers to measure the success of their campaigns. RPost is set to license its patented technology to tens of thousands of email marketers, social media companies, and cloud-based businesses, and vigorously pursue infringement proceedings against those that don’t comply.

The covered tracking methods are being used by nearly every email marketing service, task management platform, and social network service as the basis of their analytical offerings. RPost estimates that more than forty billion messages a year are covered by its new patent.

“The link tracking patent is based upon technology specifications RPost submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office in 1999,” said RPost CEO, Zafar Khan. “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.” RPost has been using this technology within its Registered Email services since the early 2000’s.

Determined to defend its intellectual property, RPost previously brought lawsuits claiming infringement of its proof of delivery patent in Federal Courts in California, Texas and Virginia in 2011 against Swiss Post, Canada Post, ZixCorp, Docusign, Adobe Echosign, RightSignature, and Farmers Insurance, among others. The cases are set to go to jury trial in the Eastern District of Texas in August 2013.