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I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996, and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a phone
by alain94040 15y ago
I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996, and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a phone number or a date in an email: it automatically detects it and gives me contextual choices, such as move the phone number into my address book (automatically extracting the sender's name), or create an appointement based on a piece of text that says "let's talk tomorrow at 3pm".
I'd say it's pretty smart. I can't guarantee it had never been done before 1996, but if I had come up with that at the time, I would have felt happy to file a patent for it.
That being said, that patent is not critical to Android. Worst case, you can't auto-extract phone numbers and emails from random text. Big deal.
- exit 15y agoit's a completely trivial idea and apple just happens to be the clown that handed in their paper work first. or bought the stamped paper work from whoever. i've lost a lot of respect for apple for trying to leverage this patent.
- FiddlerClamp 15y agoI wonder if ACT had that functionality at the time...or the Newton, a bit earlier.
- ww520 15y agoI seem to remember Lotus Agenda did that long time ago back in the PC era. Should that be a prior art?
- alain94040 15y agoGood catch. Per Wikipedia: Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing. Since that software is from 1992, it would definitely be prior art.