System and process for transmitting electronic mail using a conventional facsimile device

摘要

This invention relates to a system for combining an electronic mail (email) address or addresses and/or facsimile telephone numbers into a fax message, so that when received by a server the fax document is processed and transmitted as an email attachment to the email addresses or a fax message to the telephone numbers of the intended fax recipients. This allows the user to be able to send faxes and emails from a conventional fax machine or personal computer without having an Internet connection.

主权项

1. A system for forwarding message data to a recipient, comprising:
a server to communicate with a facsimile device in accordance with a local area network protocol to receive, by way of a local area network, a request from the facsimile device, wherein the request contains 1) a scanned paper document as message data associated with 2) a recipient's email address specified by a sender and 3) an encryption indicator that indicates whether the message data is encrypted, the server is to extract the recipient's email address from the request, apply an email header, to the message data, that contains the extracted recipient's email address, send an email containing the message data with the applied email header, to the recipient's email address, the server is to then receive an email message from the recipient that includes information about the recipient's system, check the encryption indicator from the request, and send the message data to the recipient in a format compatible with the recipient's system when determining that the message data is not encrypted and send an email message to the recipient that directs the recipient to contact the sender when determining that the message data is encrypted.