TECHCRUNCH
MICHAEL ARRINGTON
6 MAY 08
This is an interesting story in light of the discussion yesterday about the fate of the intellectual property of failed startups. Email startup Xobni
, which recently turned down a $20 million acquisition offer from Microsoft, says they have acquired the key patents around a product called Zaplets which originally launched in 2000.
Zaplets was an email product that put synchronized applications into email messages. The goal was to reduce email back and forth around things like scheduling meetings, coordinating events, etc. Any time an email turned into a thread, Zaplets may be more useful - all those responses would be brought right back into the original email. The Zaplet automatically updated itself in the original email, so long threads were avoided.
If Zaplets launched today, they’d call them email widgets.
