I haven't read the patent in detail but from Apple's description my initial suspicion is that this patent could likely be invalidated by using the prior art of MUD clients such as Tintin from the early 90s. It was fairly common for users to set up triggers that detect particular patterns of text that represented structured information and then initiating an action based upon them.
Here's Apple description of what the patent in question is:
"The '647 patent generally relates to a computer-based system and method for detecting structures and performing computer-based actions on the detected structures. In particular, this invention recognizes that computer data may contain structures, for example, phone numbers, post-office addresses, and dates, and performs related actions with that data. The '647 patent accomplishes this by identifying the structure, associating candidate actions to the structures, enabling selections of an action, and automatically performing the selected action on the structure. For instance, the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user's interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number."
Anyone who's read the patent in detail care to comment if they think MUD clients would be sufficient prior-art to invalidate it ?
Here's Apple description of what the patent in question is:
"The '647 patent generally relates to a computer-based system and method for detecting structures and performing computer-based actions on the detected structures. In particular, this invention recognizes that computer data may contain structures, for example, phone numbers, post-office addresses, and dates, and performs related actions with that data. The '647 patent accomplishes this by identifying the structure, associating candidate actions to the structures, enabling selections of an action, and automatically performing the selected action on the structure. For instance, the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user's interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number."
Anyone who's read the patent in detail care to comment if they think MUD clients would be sufficient prior-art to invalidate it ?