Time-managed electronic mail messages

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8930474-B2
Application number	US-201213400242-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 20, 2012
Priority date	Feb 20, 2012
Publication date	Jan 6, 2015
Grant date	Jan 6, 2015

Abstract

Systems, method sand computer program products for facilitating the automatic deletion of received emails after a user-selectable time period has elapsed are disclosed. In various embodiments, email messages contain a header field referred to as an “Expiration Time” header field that dictates the length of time the email will reside in a designated Inbox prior to its automatic deletion by an email server. The server is able to automatically delete the received email as long as the email is residing in a folder that is synched to the server. A user receiving the email has access to the Expiration Time Header field and can modify its value if desired and allowed by the sender. The user can move the retrieved email to a folder that is not synched to the server, thus preventing the email from being automatically deleted by the server.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for processing email messages, the method comprising:
receiving, at a server, an email that has an associated value of expiration, wherein the value represents a time period for which the email is maintained in a first folder on the server prior to automatic deletion;
transmitting, from the server, a copy of the received email to a second folder on a client device in communication with the server, the second folder on the client device being synch…

Assignees

• Sobhani Dolly
• Microsoft Corp

Inventors

• Sobhani Dolly

Classifications

• H04L51/18 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L51/214

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06Q50/60 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• H04L51/42 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic