 For example, the advent and adoption of information-based indicia (IBI) (commonly referred to as digitally-encoded electronic stamps or digital indicia) by the US Postal Service in 1998 caused widespread consternation in the franking machine industry, as their equipments were effectively rendered obsolescent and resulted in a flurry of lawsuits involving Pitney Bowes among others.The advent of e-mail in the late 1990s appeared to offer a substantial threat to the postal service.By 2008 letter-post service operators were reporting significantly smaller volumes of letter-post, specifically stamped envelopes, which they attributed mainly to replacement by e-mail.