Patent ID: 7136901

Claim:
An electronic mail server for facilitating e-mail communication over a network, the electronic mail server comprising: an account name database including a plurality of database records, each said record being associated with an e-mail account and including an e-mail address name comprising at least one record character having a record character set type, and a record character set identifier identifying the record character set type; a message database; and an account name processor in communication with the account name database and the message database for processing at least one e-mail message received from a network device over the network, the e-mail message including an e-mail address comprising at least one e-mail address character, one of the address characters being a member of a non-ASCII character set, the account name processor including: a correlation processor configured to correlate the received e-mail address with one of the e-mail accounts; and a response processor in communication with the correlation processor for directing the received e-mail message to the message database in accordance with an outcome of the correlation.