Is this because someone forgot to patent the cc feature of email? We've been doing similar point to multi-medium translation of messages for decades. Email to e

Is this because someone forgot to patent the cc feature of email? We've been doing similar point to multi-medium translation of messages for decades. Email to email+text pager for doctors in hospitals. Surely there's a strong prior art case that invalidates this, but this is also obvious enough that it really shouldn't get through in the first place. I am just too thick to understand IP law.