Patent ID: 7865556

Claim:
An email system for conveying email messages from senders to recipients, the senders and the recipients each having an email client for allowing the senders and recipients to create and view email and for sending out of office notifications to senders when a recipient is out of the office, the system comprising: a mail server for each sender; a mail server for each recipient for receiving email from the sender mail server when a sender has created an email and sent the email from his sender mail server to the recipient mail server, the recipient email server having an out of office agent for sending out of office notifications to email senders when the intended email recipients is not available; a backup email server for providing redundancy for the main email server if the main email server fails; a receiving router for receiving the email message; a sending router for sending the email message; and an out of office agent responder in the receiving router for, in a case that the recipient mail server has failed and is unable to send a notice that the intended receiver is not available, responding by the receiving router to the sender client with a notice originating from the receiving router that the intended receiver is not available.