Patent ID: 7664880

Claim:
A method for delivery of a message over a communications network from a sender, said method comprising: generating a message having a collection of recipient addresses including two or more recipient addresses each identifying at least one recipient of the message under different domains with domain information associated therewith, said different domains having mail handling servers associated therewith, each of the recipient addresses having a domain associated therewith; generating a single delivery address as one unit for the message, said single delivery address representing the collection of recipient addresses; encoding the generated single delivery address with the collection of recipient addresses in the message; transmitting a single copy of the message including the encoded single delivery address to each of the mail handling servers for each of the different domains; in response to each particular mail handling server receiving the single copy of the message: expanding by each particular mail handling server the collection of the recipient addresses from the encoded single delivery address; generating by each particular mail handling server a copy of the message for each identified recipient(s) of the associated domain; and transmitting by each particular mail handling server the generated copies of the message over the communications network to the identified recipient(s).