RPost and Goodmail settle lawsuit

Last September, I blogged about RPost suing Goodmail for patent infringement. Today the two companies announced they’ve reached a settlement and have forged a partnership. Goodmail will be offering RPost’s technology as an upgrade to customers and replacing their own “proof of delivery” technology with RPost’s legal service technology.

“We carefully reviewed RPost’s patented technology,” said Daniel Dreymann, President and co-founder of Goodmail Systems, Inc.  “We decided that we could build the strongest product offering for these compliance products by partnering with them.”
“The combined product allows both RPost and Goodmail to do what they do best,” said Zafar Khan, CEO of RPost.  “Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail protects the recipients of email by letting them know that the message comes from a trusted sender. RPost’s Registered Email service protects email senders by allowing them to prove that their message was delivered and what it said.”

Last week, RPost announced a partnership with ReturnPath to offer proof of delivery certification into the ReturnPath product line as well.

Related Posts

Goodmail sued for patent infringement

Late last week RPost sued Goodmail for infringing two patents. One patent authenticates content and delivery of documents. The second verifies the message was received by the recipient.
Patent #6,182,219: Apparatus and method for authenticating the dispatch and contents of documents.

Read More

Interview with Matt Blumberg

Mark Brownlow posted an interview with Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, about the merger with Habeas. It is well worth a read.
I have not yet commented on the merger and how this is going to affect the delivery industry because I am not sure how it will. Some of the effect is dependent on what ReturnPath does with the two companies and how their policies change. Here at Word to the Wise, we have known the folks at both companies for a very long time.
One thing that strikes me about this merger is that it means there are few direct competitors left in the delivery market. Everyone currently in the whitelist / delivery certification market seems to have a slightly different target audience and slightly different business model.
ReturnPath has SenderScore Certified and the Safelist. To get on these lists senders must meet criteria that, while filtered through ReturnPath, are set by the ISPs. Many senders find that they can get consistently high inbox delivery just by meeting the ISP standards, even if they are not SenderScore Certified or on the Safelist. However, certification does provide senders with an assurance that they are meeting standards.
Goodmail has their CertifiedEmail product. While certified senders must also meet criteria, they are also paying ISPs for delivery. I have always seen the Goodmail product as more focused on and more valuable for transactional senders rather than other senders. This slightly overlaps with ReturnPath’s target market, but the senders in this market do have different needs pressures.
ISIPP has their SuretyMail product. This provides a framework for senders to make statements about the email they send in a way that receivers can reliably query. This is a slightly different approach, in that ISIPP does not classify mail for their customers, but allows customers to self-classify. The benefit of ISIPP is that the ISIPP framework is trusted by their receiver-users and can push back on ISIPP if customers incorrectly self-classify.
Different markets, different business models, different approaches.

Read More

Technology does not trump policy when it comes to delivery

Recently Ken Magill wrote an article looking at how an ESP was attempting to sell him services based on the ESPs ‘high deliverability rates.’ I commented that Ken was right, and I still think he is.
Ken has a followup article today. In the first part he thanks Matt Blumberg from Return Path for posting a thoughtful blog post on the piece. Matt did have a very thoughtful article, pointing out that the vast majority of things affecting delivery are under the control of the list owner, not under the control of the ESP. As they are both right, I clearly agree with them. I’ve also posted about reputation and delivery regularly.

Read More