Patent ID: 8626840

Claim:
A method comprising: at an email server: (a) obtaining a primary electronic mail message; (b) obtaining a reference to accompanying data in the primary electronic mail message, wherein the reference allows reconstitution of the accompanying data from the primary electronic mail message, and wherein the accompanying data includes data selected from the group consisting of text, an attached file, a hypertext markup language (HTML) tag, and formatting information; (c) storing the primary electronic mail message and the reference in a repository; and (d) storing the primary electronic mail message in a mailbox of a first recipient; at an email client: (e) receiving, from a mail agent of the first recipient, a non-referencing secondary electronic mail message for a second recipient, wherein the non-referencing secondary electronic mail message includes the accompanying data of the primary electronic mail message; (f) comparing the non-referencing secondary electronic mail message to the primary electronic mail message, thus yielding a difference; (g) storing the difference in a referencing secondary message skeleton; (h) retrieving the reference from the repository; and (i) embedding the reference into the referencing secondary message skeleton, thus yielding a referencing secondary electronic mail message; and at the email server: (j) obtaining the referencing secondary electronic mail message; (k) reading the reference from the referencing secondary electronic mail message; (l) retrieving the accompanying data from the repository; (m) replacing the reference in the referencing secondary electronic mail message with the accompanying data, thus yielding a reconstituted secondary electronic mail message; and (n) transmitting the reconstituted secondary electronic mail message to a server for the second recipient.