US patent granted to Postini, the email security company, could grant it legal ownership of a large chunk of the methodology underlying anti-spam and message filtering technology on the market.

The implications for the mail filtering business are huge - if the patent can withstand a legal challenge.

The patent effectively says that any system which intercepts mail, filtering viruses and spam messages from the inbox and then sends what's left to the intended recipient is using Postini's intellectual property (IP). This could apply to a large section of the anti-spam and anti-virus market.

By Lucy Sherriff at The Register.

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