Clickable Phone Numbers: Obvious or Not?

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is suing Google, claiming that Android infringes on iOS (iPhone) patents. One of Apple’s patents is apparently for the feature of clicking on a phone number in a web page, to make the phone automatically dial that number. That patent should be invalidated immediately, for several reasons:

1. The Palm Treo 650 had clickable phone numbers in emails. When you implement the same idea in a web browser, does that really deserve a patent? No. It’s obvious, and patents have to be “nonobvious” according to patent law.

2. If you aren’t convinced that this is an obvious idea, take a look at this online web forum of Palm Treo users from 2005. Everyone is saying “This is so obvious! Why doesn’t Palm implement this?” And apparently, you could download an app that would make phone numbers clickable in most of your Treo apps.

I found the language of Apple’s patent online,* and I can’t believe Apple was granted a patent for such a broad claim that was obvious and was pre-existing in prior art. Read this, and then try to tell me our patent system is not broken:

Claim 1: A computer-based system for detecting structures in data and performing actions on detected structures, comprising: an input device for receiving data; an output device for presenting the data; a memory storing information including program routines including an analyzer server for detecting structures in the data, and for linking actions to the detected structures; a user interface enabling the selection of a detected structure and a linked action; and an action processor for performing the selected action linked to the selected structure; and a processing unit coupled to the input device, the output device, and the memory for controlling the execution of the program routines.

Claim 8: The system recited in claim 1, wherein the user interface highlights detected structures.

As I pointed out earlier this week, Palm Treo did it first. I admit I’m not an expert in this; perhaps Apple purchased Palm’s patent? Is there some legal basis for arguing that Palm’s clickable email phone numbers are somehow different from the above language?

In other news today (Friday August 31, 2012) a Japanese court ruled against Apple in its lawsuit against Samsung. This fight was over a completely different patent than the seven at issue before the California jury: Apple had a patent on a technique for synchronizing music and video data with servers.

I remain convinced that Apple will eventually lose, on the grounds that many of these patents are invalid due either to obviousness, or because the ideas already existed in devices that predated the iPhone.

*http://www.techspot.com/news/46757-htc-loses-to-apple-several-android-phones-banned-in-the-us.html