Patent ID: 7343394

Claim:
In a data processing system supporting an electronic mail messaging system, a method of managing e-mail messages, comprising: under the control of a mail user agent of a message sender user: keeping a list of messages sent by the message sender user; enabling the sender user selecting a message from the list of sent messages, the selected message including a list of message recipient users containing at least one message recipient user, wherein the selected message was previously sent to the at least one message recipient user; causing a correcting message to be sent to at least one of the message recipient users in the list of message recipient users of the selected message, the correcting message including a message qualifier qualifying the correcting message as a message intended to correct the selected message; under the control of a mail user agent of said at least one of the message recipient users: receiving the correcting message; using the message qualifier included in the received correcting message, identifying the selected message among the messages received by the mail user agent of the at least one message recipient user; performing a correcting action on the identified selected message, in which said performing a correcting action on the identified selected message includes: ascertaining whether the identified selected message has already been read by the at least one of the message recipient users, and replacing the identified selected message with the received correcting message on condition that the identified selected message has not yet been read; and sending a correcting action confirmation message back to the message sender user.