Lately, I've been thinking about the following idea: if a particular trademark (for instance, "ImNotSpam!") came to be known as associated with legitimate email, then legitimate emailers could include it in their messages, in the subject lines and/or bodies. The results would be:
a) spam filters would train themselves to consider such emails to be legit, so it would get through;
b) when spammers figured it out and starting using it in their emails in order to evade the filters, they would be guilty of trademark infringement. This is cool, because it would put spammers in the position of violating the law: something they are not now doing in most locations. They would become vulnerable to civil lawsuits for trademark infringement. As spammers started trying to use the mark spam filters would no longer consider the trademark to be 100% associated with legitimate email, but if the lawsuits succeeded, they would still be associated with it most of the time, so legitimate emails containing the mark would still go through.
But I found out today that this idea is now being done by a company called Habeas, and they seem to be doing a superb job of it. The service was introduced 13 weeks ago. It costs nothing for individuals to use their trademark in outgoing emails (and they guarantee that will remain true in the future), and they say they have deals with filters like SpamAssissin to let emails with the mark go through, so they don't even need to be trained. More impressively, they have deals with AOL and Yahoo. In addition they are using a haiku form to invoke copyright law as well as trademark law. It looks like they have the legal issues very well thought out, although I'm sure some of their assumptions are untested in court. Check them out. Here's their FAQ.
1:41:16 PM 
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