It's not patently obvious to me that his internal app matches claim 1 of the patent; if it was, I would have commented on it. It is not an infringement of this patent to sell software that regexes phone numbers. Do you believe otherwise?

I wasn't arguing that it did or didn't infringe the claim, because I hadn't read the claim thoroughly yet; I was arguing that running it on a purpose-built processor was irrelevant to whether it infringed the claim.

However, yes, I believe otherwise, if you're selling the software to US customers. (The "internal app" guy isn't selling the patented invention, but he is making and using it.)

It is an infringement of this patent to sell software that regexes phone numbers (in a "server") and makes them into clickable links to take some action, if you're selling it to US customers.

Installing the software on a computer and running it necessarily produces an infringing system, according to Apple's assertion, which the ITC judge has upheld. The staple article of commerce doctrine does not protect the sale of articles "which are only adapted to be used in a patented combination".

Microsoft v. AT&T would seem to protect you if you're exporting the software rather than selling it to consumers within the US; "The master disk or electronic transmission Microsoft sends from the United States is never installed on any of the foreign-made computers in question. Instead, copies made abroad are used for installation." However, it would be very surprising indeed if courts construed that to protect sellers of software for use inside the US, in particular because Microsoft was still paying AT&T revenues for US copies of Windows in that case.

First, you spent a lot of words arguing with me before reading the patent. Don't do that.

Second, you've misread the patent. The "server" needs to be in the same machine as the input and output device. The patent description defines the terms used in the claims language (you will easily find a basis for that assertion in patent law if you look); here, the server is a subroutine coupled to the system via an application programming interface.

Further, I believe if you take the time to poke around, you'll find software extracting patterns from text in the prior art references. Claims cannot be interpreted to substantially duplicate the descriptions (not simply the claims) of cited prior art.

Finally, your logic doesn't work. In your worldview, if I sell frobnitz flanges, and Apple invents a phone that uses frobnitz flanges to legibly display the otherwise invisible color blurple, and then files a blurple-display patent referencing frobnitz flanges, I can no longer sell frobnitz flanges. Any elementary description of "how to read patent claims" will show this logic to be false. The infringer must violate all the elements of the claim.

(Late edit: I mean to say, the direct infringer).

Your objection to me not having read the patent would hold more water if you could show something I was mistaken about as a result.

I'll take your word on the definition of "server". I'm not sure why you think I misread the patent, though. If I thought the "server" had to be on a different machine, I'd be claiming Android didn't infringe.

You are correct about claim construal, but no narrower construal suggests itself to me for this claim. So perhaps you are mistaken and there is no such cited prior art, or perhaps the examiner should have stricken this claim, or perhaps there is a narrower construal that isn't obvious to me.

You are mistaken about my worldview. My worldview comes from patent law. In your example, if people have been buying frobnitz flanges before Apple's new invention, they are clearly adapted to some other use than displaying blurple. So, in my worldview, they are a "staple article of commerce", a term I have used several times in this discussion and which you would do well to look up, so their sale is non-infringing. However, a piece of software whose installation and use on a computer necessarily infringes the patent is not suitable for substantial noninfringing use (unless perhaps you can argue that its use to paper your wall or as an illustration in a discussion about software patents is substantial), so selling it separately is clearly just an attempt to infringe the patent in a sneaky way. (Presuming, of course, that the patent is valid at all.)

This is not some hare-brained theory I just thought up on the spur of the moment. You'll find it explained in any patent law textbook, in quite a number of online introductions to patent law, and in §271 (c) of the Patent Code. You are welcome to attempt to explain to Congress and the Supreme Court that their logic doesn't work because it forbids the sale of frobnitz flanges or whatever, but don't blame it on my worldview.

Is that a pun?