Patent ID: 8756286

Claim:
A method for transmitting an electronic mail (e-mail) message from a sender having a non-ASCII e-mail address to a recipient, the method comprising the steps of: establishing an a common e-mail inbox directory associated with a requested primary e-mail address, having a non-ASCII form, and a corresponding alternate e-mail address having an ASCII form, the alternate e-mail address being generated from the primary e-mail address using a reversible encoding scheme having a one-to-one relationship, both the primary e-mail address and the alternate e-mail address are linked as respective email addresses to the common e-mail inbox directory, wherein the alternate e-mail address is an encoded value of the primary e-mail address using the reversible encoding scheme, such that using the same said reversible encoding scheme provides a same encoding for the domain name to give a uniform encoding of the whole email address; transmitting the e-mail message and both the primary e-mail address and the alternate e-mail address, either of the primary e-mail address or the alternate e-mail address for use in identifying the sender; disregarding the primary e-mail address; and transmitting the alternate e-mail address to a mail delivery element incapable of processing non-ASCII characters, the alternate e-mail address for use by the mail delivery element to identify the sender and deliver the e-mail message to the recipient for display.