Intellectual Property » Man Claiming He Invented Email Is No Troll

Man Claiming He Invented Email Is No Troll

February 22, 2017

URBAN COMMUNICATION SURVEY Tredennick tighter

He holds four degrees from MIT, runs a startup in the high-tech hotbed of Cambridge, Mass., and says he invented e-mail when he was 14 years old, then copyrighted the code a few years later. “Dispute him at your risk,” says the headline on a Boston Globe profile of the now 53-year old Shiva Ayyadurai. “On August 30, 1982,” Ayyadurai says, “I get issued a copyright officially recognizing me as the inventor of e-mail.” True, the Globe says, he got a copyright on something. The question is whether it was what we now know as email. Many say it was not, but nonetheless Ayyadurai was able to garner a $750,000 settlement from Gawker, and has filed a $15 million libel suit against the tech blog Techdirt for calling his claims bogus and accusing him of lying. Ayyadurai acknowledges his position would be stronger if had a patent and not a copyright, but he insists he deserves credit for the invention.

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