The other interesting news last week on the email invention front was reporting of several motions filed by Techdirt in response to Ayyadurai's lawsuit. There's analysis and links to the motions from https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/techdirt-lawyers-ask-judge-to-th row-out-defamation-suit-over-inventor-of-e-mail/. One of them tries to move the case to California. Among other things, California has relatively strong anti-SLAPP measures designed to deter frivolous defamation lawsuits. Another asks for the case to be dismissed immediately. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3468184-13-Main.html Some interesting arguments there. I'm not by any means a legal expert but they do seem to point to a high bar in a case like this. The things said need to be provably false, and according to the motion subjective opinions are therefore inherently not actionable. The motion claims that Ayyadurai's complaint doesn't dispute facts presented by Techdirt, only disagree with opinions. To win damages Ayyadurai would need to document actual economic harm, which the motion suggests was not documented in his complaint. The motion also points out that as a public figure, a fairly low bar to reach, Ayyadurai would apparently to show malice - not just that Techdirt made false and damaging claims but that Masnick either recklessly failed to check the claims or knew what he was saying to be false. It's certainly noticeable to me, as a non-lawyer, that the Techdirt motion is full of legal specifics and citations to case law, whereas Ayyadurai's complaint instead has many pages full of character witness statements and media quotes it claims support the idea that he invented email. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3252883/Techdirt-Emaillawsuit.pdf I was also interested in analysis of the case by Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/13/what-a-s trange-allegation-in-alleged-inventor-of-e-mail-vs-techdirt-lawsuit/?utm_ter m=.ee68f735aac4 Volookh expressed surprise that a legal filing would claim that "Ayyadurai was legally recognized by the United States government as the inventor of email through the issuance of the first U.S. Copyright registration for "Email" ". Volokh writes No - a copyright registration for a program named "email" is not the U.S. government recognizing Ayyadurai "as the inventor of email." No-one at the Copyright Office determines whether a program (or any other work) is a new invention. (Patent examiners may do that, but the Copyright Office doesn't.) Indeed, no-one at the Copyright Office runs the program, reads the source code, or tries to compare the program's description to those of other programs.. That's why I'm surprised that Ayyadurai's lawyers, Timothy Cornell and noted libel lawyer Charles Harder, even included this paragraph in their Complaint - it just seems to me likely to lessen the credibility of the claim with the judge. I had e-mailed them for their comments several days ago, but have not heard back from them. Best wishes, Tom