RPost sues Swiss Post for Patent and Trademark Infringement

March 8, 2010 - PRLog -- Los Angeles, CA --- RPost®, the global pioneer in email proof services with its flagship Registered Email® technology, announced today that it has brought suit against Swiss Post for patent and trademark infringement. RPost has asked the US Federal Court to issue an injunction to prevent further damages.

RPost’s flagship Registered Email® service provides senders legally valid, court admissible evidence of email content and delivery. Swiss Post and Swiss Post Solutions offer a service called “Registered Email” that claims to prove delivery of email.  RPost is suing Swiss Post for infringing several RPost patents and RPost’s federally registered “REGISTERED E-MAIL” trademark.

The suit is likely to attract the interest of legal experts around the world.  Private law suits against foreign governments are rare enough.  A suit against a foreign government agency for infringing an U.S. patent is a legal first.  

“This lawsuit is about Swiss Post’s activities in America,” remarks Zafar Khan, RPost’s CEO. “We are sending a message to the world on behalf of all American internet innovators: you can’t circumvent American patent law just by operating servers off shore, no matter how big you are.”

But RPost’s quarrel with Swiss Post won’t stop at the US border. “We have 25 patents issued worldwide including two Swiss patents that Swiss Post’s operations are clearly infringing,” Khan says. “We intend to defend all of our intellectual property, everywhere. I am confident that, by the time we’re through, Swiss Post is going to be out of the email proof business.”

RPost has business alliances with many national postal services.  It has entered into joint ventures with the government postal services of Bermuda, Iceland, Colombia and the Cayman Islands to provide value added email services to their national markets. “Postal services around the world are partnering with RPost because they recognize that email presents a new revenue stream for the future and they recognize our unique role as the world leader in value-added outbound email technology,” adds Khan. “Swiss Post realizes that too but, faced with a choice between “build or buy”, they chose “steal”.  And they are going to pay a price for that.”  

The suit is only the latest battle in an RPost campaign to enforce its patent rights.  In the past six months, over half a dozen companies that claimed to offer proof of email delivery have either withdrawn their services or ceased operation as a result. Competitors Olympus.net, GProof, and RegisteredEmail.Com have shut down their special email services altogether (with the domain www.registeredemail.com transferred to RPost), and several US ISP’s have stopped hosting web sites of RPost’s offshore competitors. Last month a suit RPost had brought against Goodmail, which also named AOL and Yahoo, was settled with Goodmail agreeing to use RPost technology for all of its proof of delivery products.  Florida based GlobalPex, facing the ramp-up of an RPost patent infringement suit, has opted to enter into confidential settlement discussions with RPost.

Last week, RPost filed suit against Trustifi, a Canadian-based startup that claims to provide proof of email delivery time-stamped by the US Postal Service’s Electronic Postmark.  Is a lawsuit by RPost against the USPS in the offing?  “We’re not ruling that out,” says Khan.

RPost’s 25 patents granted worldwide have priority over technology dating back to 1996. These patents broadly cover the technologies of verifiable proof for email delivery and value-added outbound email processing.  RPost patents have been granted in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States; with numerous additional patents pending. RPost’s federally registered trademarks include ‘Registered Email®’ and ‘Legal Proof®’, among others.


About RPost
RPost has set the global standard for Legal Proof® records in Internet email with its core Registered Email® proof of legal delivery, eSignOff® electronic signature and contracting, and SecuRmail™ HIPAA compliant end-to-end email encryption services. RPost services permit the sender to prove, sign, secure, record, and collaborate with less cost, time, paper and risk. Available in eight languages and for all email platforms, RPost’s Registered Email® services have been granted 25 patents with worldwide coverage, have been used daily by the United States Government since 2003, and have been endorsed and marketed by most of the influential bar associations in the United States, including the bars of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and the District of Columbia. With US headquarters in Los Angeles, RPost has offices worldwide. www.rpost.com