The problem to be solved was providing reliable proof of the content and delivery of electronic messages.

But, the specification states: “It is common practice for Internet e-mails to be relayed from MTA to MTA until they reach their final destination. The primary purpose for requiring a direct connection between the RPost server and the destination’s MTA is so that the RPost server can record delivery of the message, (this record taking the form of an SMTP dialogue) with the e-mail server which has proprietary responsibility for receiving e-mail for the recipient domain name. The existence of this record provides helpful evidence that the message was delivered, in much the same way that a registered mail receipt provides evidence of delivery.”

The specification further states: “With the introduction of the Extended SMTP standard it became possible for sending MTAs to request notices of success and failure in the delivery of messages. These Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) are e-mails which are sent by a receiving MTA to the nominal sender of the message when certain events occur: e.g. the message has been successfully deposited into the mailbox of the recipient; the message cannot be delivered to the recipient’s mailbox for some reason; the recipient’s message has been relayed on to another server which does not give DSN receipts.”

The specification thus establishes that e-mail communication through a server, data transport protocols such as SMTP and ESMTP, and DSNs such as failure notifications were all in the prior art. Therefore, the advance over the prior art was the forming of information from a data transport protocol dialog and a failure notification and then transmitting such information to the sender (as proof of delivery).

The claim therefore is directed to forming and supplying information to provide evidence of delivery. This concept is an ancient practice analogous to registered mail and can be performed by pencil and paper. The claim is directed to an abstract idea and fails Alice/Mayo step one. Limiting the information to a particular type, i.e. transport protocol dialog and failure notification, does not make the concept any less abstract.

At step two, limiting the field of use to e-mail and employing a generic server to perform routine functions such as receiving, forming, and transmitting information do not qualify as significantly more than the abstract idea itself. The claim fails Alice/May step two and is invalid.

Once the inventor came up with the good idea to use a data transport protocol dialog and a failure notification as proof of delivery, there was no technological problem to solve. No new technology was needed, and the idea could be implemented using the existing capabilities of a generic server.