IP issues; could we see this in Mozilla/Thunderbird?

Article:		The Fight Against Spam, Part 2
Subject:		IP issues; could we see this in Mozilla/Thunderbird?
Date:		2004-05-19 14:13:41
From:		Chirael

This all sounds extremely cool. However, I have to wonder if we will--or ever could--see it in Mozilla or Thunderbird. What is the status of the intellectual property protection on this technology? AFAIK, Mozilla/Thunderbird uses Bayesian filtering, which works OK but sounds like it might be able to be enhanced/replaced by this sort of thing. However, if Apple's got a patent on it, then I guess the open source community is out of luck (or will have to come up with something better :)