[uiri]

I'm not going to dispute your assertions regarding his character, politics, or technical competence.

However, it is clear that he did not invent email as we know it today. This claim has repeatedly been debunked. He wrote an interoffice memo system called EMAIL which is, to my knowledge, unrelated to the development of SMTP and the ARPANET systems that preceded it. Those ARPANET systems predated Ayyadurai's EMAIL program(s).

He did not win against Gawker. Gawker happened to go out of business due to a separate defamation lawsuit while Ayyadurai's lawsuit was still pending. Gawker decided to settle the lawsuit instead.

[baudehlo]

Correct, and those systems were even referred to as "email" before this date. Just not in published specifications.