Grouping email messages into conversations

US9824314B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Apple Inc. · US

Inventors

• Alicia Thorsen · Sunnyvale, US
• Karl Hsu · San Jose, US
• Simon I. Bovet · Palo Alto, US
• Neil V. Jhaveri · San Jose, US
• Nick Woods · San Francisco, US
• Brendan J. Langoulant · San Francisco, US
• Jonathan Deutsch · Cupertino, US
• Angela Guzman · Sunnyvale, US
• Stephen O. Lemay · San Francisco, US
• Patrick L. Coffman · San Francisco, US
• Stephen Decker · San Francisco, US
• Judy D. Halchin · Cupertino, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 14, 2011
• Grant date: Nov 21, 2017
• Expiry date: Aug 25, 2033

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04L51/216
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Exemplary methods, apparatuses, and systems determine that an indication that a received message was sent in response to another message is present in the received message, parse a stored message, in response to the indication being present, for at least a partial match between a subject of the received message and contents of a subject of the stored message, and for at least a partial match between sender and recipient participants of the received message and sender and recipient participants of the stored message, and display the received message as grouped with the stored message. A further exemplary feature includes parsing text of the received message for text that is redundant of text of the stored message, determining that a minimum threshold of consecutive matching characters has been reached, and displaying the received message with the consecutive matching characters at least partially hidden from view.