Patexia seeks prior art for US Patents 7,546,351 (US ‘351) and 6,779,022 (US ‘022) which allegedly describe a set-up in which a computer server retrieves a user’s messages (e.g. emails) from multiple sources (e.g. home and office email accounts) and consolidates them through a single interface which then allows the user to read their messages and to reply to any message while distinguishing between the source accounts and preserving the identity of the account to which the message was originally sent (that is, respond to home emails using user@home and to work emails using user@work).

Note that a message in this context may be any form of electronic communication and is not necessarily restricted to email messages.

Contest Update (3/31/2014)

Patexia is particularly interested in Question 5 below. That is, does the system's message response mechanism use the source account identification as the sender identification for the outgoing response messages? For example, when responding to a message which was sent to the user’s home email address @home.com, the FROM address of the response should show as user@home.com, and when responding to a message sent to the user’s work email address @work.com, the FROM address should show as user@work.com.

Questions

1. Was the reference filed or published before August 17th, 2000? (True/False)
2. Does the reference describe a system (e.g., a server) which stores a user’s profile information, including account identifiers (e.g., email addresses) from at least two accounts and message filter preferences, and uses that information to access the user’s incoming messages from multiple accounts?
3. Does the described system have a user interface that allows the user to view the incoming messages from the multiple accounts?
4. Does the user interface allow the user to respond to incoming messages, regardless of the account in which those messages were received?
5. When a user responds to a message received in a particular account, does the system identify that same account as the account from which the response is sent?

Bonus Questions

6. Does the reference describe a system (e.g., server) that periodically polls a user’s different accounts and actually retrieves the user’s messages from those accounts?