Patent ID: 8561163

Claim:
A method of maintaining the integrity of email authorship, the method comprising: receiving, by a receiving email client, an email message containing content created by a sender; identifying, by the receiving email client in dependence upon the email message, an edit authority value established by the sender of the email message for that content; receiving, by the receiving email client from a recipient of the email message, an instruction to forward the received email message; receiving, by the receiving email client from the recipient, an instruction to edit the content created by the sender contained in the received email message; determining, by the receiving email client in dependence upon the edit authority value, whether to allow the recipient to edit the content; if the recipient is not allowed to edit the content, forwarding, by the receiving email client, the email message without altering the content created by a sender; if the recipient is allowed to edit the content, determining, by the receiving email client in dependence upon the edit authority value, whether to enforce edit tracking in the content; and receiving edits from the recipient, including the edits in the content created by the sender with edit tracking, and forwarding, the email message with the recipient's edits tracked if edit tracking is enforced; or receiving edits from the recipient, including the edits in the content created by the sender without edit tracking, and forwarding the email message with the recipient's edits untracked if edit tracking is not enforced.