The USPS did not give a reason or cite any studies leading to the ban.

The decision, which classifies iPad, Kindles, smartphones, cameras, GPS devices, MP3 players, Bluetooth headsets, laptops, portable DVDs and even electric razors as “dangerous goods,” it indicated, apparently stems from a “convention” made by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), a UN body, and “instructions” from the International Civil Aviation Organiza¬tion (ICAO).

Only Australia Post has a lithium ban. Britain’s Royal Mail only restricts laptop batteries and Japan Post sends lithium batteries by sea. FedEx and UPS haven’t changed their policies. The decision is going to hurt the USPS, which is already hemorrhaging through every pore.

Lithium batteries can explode or burst into flame and are suspected of downing two UPS cargo planes, one of them killing the pilot and co-pilot, but with improper storage and packing they’re supposedly not an issue.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has counted 17 fires on passenger planes all but one traceable to lithium batteries carried by passengers or packed in their luggage. In 2008 the FAA barred passengers from carrying spare batteries in checked luggage and has recommended that passenger airlines put any battery shipments in areas with fire-suppression systems. Meanwhile, statistical models run by others have calculated there will be 4.5 accidents due to lithium-battery fires from 2011 to 2020 and cost $395 million.

Apple and Amazon ship their widgets not fully charged to lessen the risk.

Without giving much of an explanation about what’s gonna change, the USPS also said it expects that “on January 1, 2013 customers will be able to mail specific quantities of lithium batteries internationally (including to and from an APO, FPO, or DPO location) when the batteries are properly installed in the personal electronic devices they are intended to operate.” That means after the UPS and ICAO arrive at some “international standard.”

Until then international shipments will have to go by the pricier UPS, FedEx or DHL. Couriers don’t go directly to APO, FPO, or DPO addresses and that impacts American troops and diplomatic personnel serving abroad. Under the new rule resellers will also be impacted.

See http://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2012/pb22336/html/updt_004.htm.

In a sweeping decision all 89 of its claims have been left standing against challenges of prior art. Patent holders dream of such things.

It is understood to be a so-called “final final” decision covering items such as time-stamp authentication.

No one except the PTO knows who made the claims of prior art but that unknown challenger reportedly dumped scads of documentation on the PTO for it to wade through and failed.

It’s bad news for the slate of companies RPost is suing in federal courts in California, Texas and Virginia for infringing US Patent No 6,182,219 including Swiss Post, Canada Post, Adobe, Docusign, Zix, RightSignature and Farmers Insurance among others.

Jury trial dates have now been set for the cases in the Eastern District of Texas for August of 2013.

RPost holds patents similar to ‘219 in the UK, Switzerland, Canada and Australia.

In a statement RPost CEO Zafar Khan said “We are pleased the Patent Office has interpreted this RPost patent in the manner in which we always have: a patent on proof of successful electronic transmission.”

He added, “We have heard that those we have sued for patent infringement are putting out false statements to their customers claiming the RPost patents are not novel and are therefore invalid. This Patent Office re-examination conclusion delivers a clear message of novelty, patentability and validity over all known prior art.”

Khan said Swiss Post in ongoing litigation with RPost in Switzerland has never claimed not to be infringing RPost’s patents but rather that RPost’s technology isn’t novel and so its patents are invalid. Swiss Post is trying to get the Swiss courts to agree.

Swiss Post wrote in a public statement that “the US Patent Office concluded that all claims made under the US patent from RPost cannot be protected because of a lack of novelty.” RPost now throws this statement back in Swiss Post’s face saying it “can now clearly be seen as false and intentionally attempting to mislead their customers and partners.”

As recently as March 7, Frank Marthaler, a member of Swiss Post’s executive board, said in letter to customers that “Swiss Post customers will continue to receive the digitally signed receipt confirmation without any changes” to IncaMail, the Swiss Post widgetry RPost has accused of infringing.

Khan figures this “might lead the courts to conclude that not only is Swiss Post is willfully infringing, but they are also leading their customers and partners to willfully infringe RPost patents.”

He said, “This should serve as a signal to not only those companies that we have sued for patent infringement, but also their end users and resellers to stop infringing, assess your situation and examine your indemnifications. We intend to enforce our patent rights everywhere.”

RPost notes that under US patent law, “whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell or sells any patented invention within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefore infringes the patent. Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer (35 USC 271).”

Meanwhile, RPost’s patent portfolio continues to grow. The PTO has allowed three new RPost patents that center on technologies for recording delivery and opening e-mail. RPost 35 older patents already cover compliant message encryption and legal electronic signatures.

It’s picked up the state of Washington as well as Benton County, Chelan County, Clallam County, Clark County, Franklin County, Island County, Lincoln County, Pend Oreille County, Stevens County, Thurston County and Walla Walla County. Collectively, these government entities serve millions of residents and deliver tens of millions of documents per year.

Needless to say all the counties are in Washington State where Amazon lives. Reportedly it’s also got Clallam County Public Utilities, Mukilteo Water and Sewer District and Lake Stevens Utility District.

They’ll be able to send bills, tax statements and other notices directly into the doxo filing cabinets of their residential and commercial customers. Customers, in turn, can go paper-free, get documents and bills, and set up one-time and recurring payments using doxoPAY and doxo Mobile.

The start-up says that when governments connect with residential and commercial customers on doxo, they eliminate the costs associated with printing and postage, shorten payment collection cycles, and provide their customers with a free tool to get statements, pay bills and store important documents.

“Like many government entities, we have been evaluating opportunities to improve service and cut costs by leveraging cloud-based technologies. In just the first 60 days since we launched on doxo, more than a thousand of our residents have already connected with us to go paper-free, receive their tax statements directly in their doxo file cabinet, and make their tax payments,” said Doug Lasher, Clark County treasurer. “Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Making sure property taxes are paid on time is a breeze with doxo and free for the taxpayer. doxo is the wave of the future.”

In addition to getting documents, bills and tax statements from their participating government entity, customers can use doxo as a free online file cabinet to store documents and manage critical account information. Each time a customer connects to a service provider, paper mail is turned off completely, and documents are thereafter delivered directly to their digital file cabinet. Documents can be filed, printed or downloaded at any time, and are securely stored without time limits.

“doxo makes it easy for state and county governments to reduce the expense of paper mail, eliminate environmental waste, and speed collection of payments,” CEO Steve Shivers said. “With very little IT hassle, government agencies and other providers can join doxo, and start improving service for residents and cutting costs in a matter of weeks. It’s extremely gratifying to already see both the magnitude of savings and the positive response from both residents and organizations alike.”

As a cloud-based service doxo requires no software, installed infrastructure, or IT services for providers to join the network.

Doxo is up for a Webby award, described by the New York Times as the “Internet’s highest honor.”

With the number of parcels on the rise because of Internet shopping, many of them consigned to the USPS for last-mile delivery, with the USPS wanting to cut deep into its headcount and trim its services, it makes sense to have the consumer to come and get the packages themselves as annoying as all that’s going to be.

On the other hand, it’ll save the post office finding nobody at home (if it really does ring the bell), leaving a chit, taking the box back to the post office and having the consumer come down and fetch it anyway.

The USPS version of the thing is called gopost and is in pilot in six initial sites in northern Virginia outside of Washington. One of them is a non-USPS location, which is practically heretical in America. However, it’s in a mall, which makes it gospel.

There will be 25 sites set up in northern Virginia this year. The USPS says it’s planning to install other gopost units in grocery stores, pharmacies, transportation hubs and other shopping centers.

To use the service, customers will register at gopost.com, where they will select their own personal ID numbers to use with their gopost access cards. The cards will be mailed to customers once registration is completed.

Packages will be delivered to gopost sites by USPS mail carriers.

When a package arrives at the locker, the gopost customer will be notified by e-mail or text message that the item can be picked up. When he get there, he’ll scan his gopost card and enter his PIN on the gopost user screen; the screen will display the locker where the package was delivered and the locker will light up and automatically unlock. When the customer removes the package the locker will automatically shut and lock.

If the package requires a signature, the recipient will be instructed to sign his name on the screen using his finger before the locker will unlock.

Customers can also use gopost to ship pre-paid packages bar-coded for shipping and tracking. Acceptable labels include Click-N-Ship, PC Postage and merchant-paid Return Services. Currently the gopost units can’t dispense postage.

The USPS imagines the lockers being used by small businesses for postage-paid packages provided they fit in whatever lockers are available.

If the right-size locker isn’t available for a delivery, the recipient is supposed to be notified that one soon will be. The USPS says the package “will be given the highest delivery priority for the next available locker of the proper size.”

If you requested a receipt, you’re supposed to collect a paper receipt from the unit. Once you’ve removed the package, you’ll automatically get an electronic receipt via e-mail or text.

The USPS is going to handle all gopost-bound packages for the moment but it may eventually just do the last mile for gopost parcels shipped via alternate carriers.

There’s no additional charge for gopost parcels but they’ll have to be picked up in 15 days; five days for Express Mail. Screw that up and they’ll be returned to sender. International packages will be removed and taken to a nearby post office. No outbound international packages can be sent yet.

The lockers are supposed to be secure.

The lockers can also be used for Priority Mail. Packages are supposed to be at least 3/4″ thick. There are three locker sizes: large, which will accommodate a package that’s 12″W x 15″D x 18 1/2″H max; larger packages may be returned to sender; medium or up to 12″W x 15″D x 6 3/4″H; and small, up to 12″W x 15″D x 3″H.

It’s going to use Volly, the sight-unseen system that Pitney Bowes announced 15 months ago but has yet to put on the market.

Australia Post said so last week making it the first national post to sign up for Volly. It plans to roll out a Voilly-based Digital Mailbox service to consumers by the end of the year.

Australia Post was spooked into finding something fast by Digital Post Australia (DPA), the joint venture based on technology supplied by the American start-up Zumbox that came out of stealth mode last month and planted its digital flag on the continent ahead of Australia Post making its “me too” move.

A digital solution should mean more cannibalization of Oz Post’s dropping physical mail volumes and consequently lower revenues.

Appearing spooked Australia Post immediately took DPA to court claiming the start-up was trading on the Australia Post name because it called itself Digital Post Australia. A federal judge denied Australia Post a preliminary injunction last week saying the state-owned agency had a “weak case.” Australia Post, which essentially claims to own the word “post,” will get another chance to slow its rival down at a trial next month.

Australia Post has two good reasons to worry that it waited too long to get into digital mail for all the handwriting on the wall.

First, the local arm of the multibillion-dollar Computershare and Salmat are Zumbox’ partners in the venture, each owning 40% of the start-up. These companies already handle mail for banks, insurance companies, utilities, telcos, government agencies and share registries and are supposed to reach every home in Australia.

They reportedly already control about 85% of the time-sensitive financial digital mail sent, such as invoices and credit card statements.

Seventy percent of all the addressed mail in Oz, which works out to 20 million items a day, is reportedly sent by 30 organisations including government agencies and DPA says it has already chatted them up, (which is probably how Oz Post found out what was afoot). DPA thinks it may get 15 of them but in the end the scheme depends on consumers buying into the free service.

Australia Post’s second problem is that Zumbox has been a marketed product in the states for the last two years. It says it’s ironed out a lot of the knotty technical issues and has been localizing the Australia service for the better part of a year. Volly is an unknown entity of unknown scale – Pitney has only tested it internally – with an architecture that appears to still be in flux.

Back in the US, Zumbox CEO John Payne, who rates Volly “a tick above vaporware,” says Australia Post will be Pitney’s “lab rat” and that Oz Post “doesn’t know yet what it doesn’t know” about wrestling a digital mail box service to market. The regulatory considerations alone are apparently daunting let alone practical consideration like what to do when a user dies.

Payne makes the point that Pitney Bowes despite its franking machine monopoly and cozy relationships with mailers has no experience of the consumer and the mass market and it is ultimately the consumer who gets to decide who wins. Whether Australia Post can supply the critical consumer touch remains to be seen.

Volly president Chuck Codray says Australia Post will have to set up or rent its own cloud infrastructure. The Australian system won’t be hosted from the US and, anyway, Volly hasn’t explained yet where its own cloud is coming from. Oz Post is getting software, technology and mailer-integration infrastructure from Volly – but nobody knows exactly what that means yet – but Cordray says the post intends to integrate its own authentication system and payment system in Volly.

He indicated customization comes by way of plug-ins.

All this could prove a tall order in the limited time Oz Post has set itself to get the widgetry out. Payne claims the integrated payment system will probably tick off the banks. Zumbox just enables payments through existing customer-selected systems in deference to the banks.

Oddly enough, Codray never mentioned that Volly has just added Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite, including Adobe’s CQ content management system, which is supposed to let international posts and banks customize their own Volly-based digital service. The Adobe widgetry is meant to imbue Volly with critical personalization and customization features.

Adobe CQ is supposed to give Volly a plug-and-play presentation layer for the personalization that international posts and banks are said to be looking for in a customizable white-label digital delivery solution and let them create their own branded solution.

The online analytics capabilities of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite are also supposed to give Volly’s mailing and service bureau partners intelligent and actionable insights so they can make more informed business decisions about how to develop and identify their markets. Mailers should be able to deliver tailored content “instantaneously,” Pitney has claimed.

Whether all that will be part of the Australian Post is again unclear.

Volly is supposed to mimic Zumbox in providing everybody in Australia with a Digital Mailbox that corresponds to their street address. Oz Post is supposed to come out with its system sometime in the second half. DPA means to stage a few soft launches and go national in the fall.

Both systems free users from visits to multiple sites and multiple passwords and are accessible from any device. They are also supposed to be proof against hacking and phishing.

Australia Post claimed Thursday in a press release intended to detail its still-somewhat-mysterious Digital Mailbox further that “We have been working hard on this project for a long time.” It said that “For senders of mail this is a low-cost and secure platform that integrates a world-class postal service with a secure digital communications suite to provide an offering of physical, digital and hybrid mail.”

Presumably that means it doesn’t intend to follow the German example and charge the same for both digital and physical mail.

Mailer are supposed to have range of integration options and, pushing classic paper mail, said its “integrated hybrid product will offer better value for money than any other singular service.”

Pitney Bowes chimed in that “the Volly-powered Australia Post Digital Mailbox will give businesses the most powerful tool yet to develop an integrated communications program that uses both physical and digital mail for maximum impact and effect.”

Of course, mailers really save money when consumers turn off physical mail.

Oz Post also claimed that Pitney Bowes “knows customer communications better than anyone.”

Like all such services, users will be given a storage locker for documents. And the post confirmed that its Digital Mailbox would be available from the iPads, iPhones and Android platforms that are currently all the rage as well as desktops.

Digital Mail Australia has a video up at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4akxVQ2ggCY.

It took DPA to court looking for an injunction to force the joint venture to change its name, claiming people will think it’s Australia Post and let DPA trade on the Australia Post brand and trust.

Australia Post expects the federal court to hear its complaint this week.

The DPA start-up only came out of stealth mode two weeks before, beating Australia Post to the digital mail market by a hair.

As soon as DPA hit the radar Australia Post said it would have a digital post product out in a “few weeks” and voilà.

Australia Post now claims that it said it would have a digital product two months ago when it sent out invitations to its new Melbourne superstore launch this week. If so, the announcement was pretty quiet.

It looks like that product is a free DPA-like “Digital Mailbox” bill consolidation and document storage service for consumers.

Although it claims superior security for important correspondence, Oz Post doesn’t have anything ready to roll out yet and in rival fashion DPA told news.com.au that Australia Post “doesn’t have a product”

DPA’s own free Digital Postal Mail widgetry is due in the fall and Oz Post may be spooked.

The joint venture, which has reportedly lined up big billers already, is using the technology Zumbox launched in the US last year and it will be pushed in Australia by two big publicly traded mail outsourcers, the Oz arm of the multibillion-dollar Computershare and the not-exactly-shabby Salmat, who together handle mail for banking, insurance, utilities, telecommunications, government and share registries and are supposed to reach every home in Australia.

Computershare and Salmat each own 40% of DPA, Zumbox the remaining 20%.

As a “utility service,” Digital Post Australia is supposed to be available to all “communication service providers” in the country, threatening Oz Post.

Revenues from both free-to-the-user schemes will come from bill issuers that can save up to 70% by going digital and Australia Post sounds like DPA when it says it will create a Digital Mailbox for every Australian sometime this year.

Oz Post said it’s supposed to allow “businesses, government entities and customers to communicate through a secure online portal that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, wherever they are” from any device. Apparently bill-paying is integrated with a history of the person’s statements and communications with the biller at hand and reminders to pay the next bill.

Besides airily promising multi-factor authentication and encryption so only the intended recipient can view any communications, the technology is pretty opaque. It’s unclear if Oz Post is getting it from the outside.

Meanwhile, given the uptick in Australian e-commerce lately, Australia Post is trying to restructure itself as parcel courier. It’s expanding its parcel locker trials from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to another seven sites with plans to rollout nationally at some point. The lockers let people pick up their goods any time of the day or night without queuing.

There’ll be 30 so-called superstores that, besides lockers, house stamp vending machines, self-service computer terminals, Macs and iPads, a Harvey World Travel shop, an American Express currency exchange, ATMs and concierge help.

Oz Post CEO Ahmed Fahour, “With our parcel volumes growing a staggering 13% since July last year due to online shopping, our superstores are where people’s physical lives will connect with their digital lives.”

The sign-up page for Oz Post’s promised Digital Mailbox is at http://auspost.com.au/personal/digital-post.html?cmpid=HP0-digital-post-girl-120326.