Email Message Header Conversation ID Reduces Network Congestion

Solution Overview

Problem

Email conversations often result in exponential growth of message size due to the copying and re-transmission of entire message histories, leading to network congestion and resource degradation.

Innovation Solution

Incorporating a conversation identifier (convo-id) in email message headers to allow recipients to associate and place messages within the conversation context without re-transmitting previous content, using a processor to determine if a message is the first in the conversation and generating convo-id values accordingly.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If the entire message history is copied and re-transmitted in each reply message, then the recipient can have full context of the conversation, but the message size grows exponentially and consumes excessive network resources

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveconversation contextVSAvoidmessage size

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSQuantity of substance

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the essential conversation context (message ID and subject line) from the full message history and includes only these extracted elements in each reply message. This allows recipients to identify and retrieve the complete conversation context from stored messages without transmitting the entire history repeatedly, thus reducing message size while preserving necessary context information.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent performs preliminary action by storing the complete message history locally on each device before replies are generated. When a reply is sent, it only includes references to the stored content rather than the content itself. This preliminary storage action enables subsequent messages to be much smaller while still providing full context access.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

2Loss of information

If the entire message history is copied and re-transmitted in each reply message, then the recipient can have full context of the conversation, but network bandwidth is excessively consumed and network congestion occurs

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveconversation contextVSAvoidnetwork bandwidth

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSLoss of energy

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the essential conversation context (message ID and subject line) from the full message history and includes only these extracted elements in each reply message. This allows recipients to identify and retrieve the complete conversation context from stored messages without transmitting the entire history repeatedly, thus reducing message size while preserving necessary context information.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent performs preliminary action by storing the complete message history locally on each device before replies are generated. When a reply is sent, it only includes references to the stored content rather than the content itself. This preliminary storage action enables subsequent messages to be much smaller while still providing full context access.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

3Loss of information

If the entire message history is copied and re-transmitted in each reply message, then the recipient can have full context of the conversation, but increasing local storage is required for collecting, saving, and processing the growing email messages

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveconversation contextVSAvoidlocal storage

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSVolume of stationary object

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the essential conversation context (message ID and subject line) from the full message history and includes only these extracted elements in each reply message. This allows recipients to identify and retrieve the complete conversation context from stored messages without transmitting the entire history repeatedly, thus reducing message size while preserving necessary context information.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent performs preliminary action by storing the complete message history locally on each device before replies are generated. When a reply is sent, it only includes references to the stored content rather than the content itself. This preliminary storage action enables subsequent messages to be much smaller while still providing full context access.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS10944704B1Method and system for reducing the sizes of electronic messages

Publication Date: 2021.03.09 CHARTER COMM OPERATING LLC

AI summary

Methods, devices, and systems for reducing the sizes of electronic messages in a conversation. A client device processor may generate a message that includes a conversation identifier (convo-id) header field and determine whether the generated message is a first message in the conversation. The client device processor may generate a convo-id value and include the generated convo-id value in the convo-id header field of the generated message in response to determining that the generated message is the first message in the conversation. The client device processor may set the convo-id value of convo-id header field of the generated message equal to the value of a convo-id header field of a previous message in response to determining that the obtained message is not the first message in the conversation.