Man Claiming He Invented Email Is No Troll

He holds four degrees from MIT, runs a startup in the high-tech hotbed of Cambridge, Mass., and says he invented e-mail when he was 14 years old, then copyrighted the code a few years later. “Dispute him at your risk,” says the headline on a Boston Globe profile of the now 53-year old Shiva Ayyadurai. “On August 30, 1982,” Ayyadurai says, “I get issued a copyright officially recognizing me as the inventor of e-mail.” True, the Globe says, he got a copyright on something. The question is whether it was what we now know as email. Many say it was not, but nonetheless Ayyadurai was able to garner a $750,000 settlement from Gawker, and has filed a $15 million libel suit against the tech blog Techdirt for calling his claims bogus and accusing him of lying. Ayyadurai acknowledges his position would be stronger if had a patent and not a copyright, but he insists he deserves credit for the invention.