The term "cookie" was derived from "magic cookie", which is the packet of data a program receives and sends again unchanged. Magic cookies were already used in computing when computer programmer Lou Montulli had the idea of using them in web communications in June 1994.[7] At the time, he was an employee of Netscape Communications, which was developing the e-commerce application "MCI Mall" for MCI. Vint Cerf and John Klensin represented MCI in technical discussions with Netscape Communications. Not wanting the MCI Mall servers to have to retain partial transaction states led to MCI's request to Netscape to find a way to store that state in each user's computer. Cookies provided a solution to the problem of reliably implementing a virtual shopping cart.[