BlackBerry patent would convert e-mailed appointment references to calendar entries
![zd-defaultauthor-russell-shaw.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/aab0ecb7fa6229ddd570d9e60960c37cdb96c2ed/2014/12/04/3c90fefa-7b70-11e4-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/zd-defaultauthor-russell-shaw.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
![skedeventselectronicmess.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/04/c3818bbc-4b5d-11e4-b6a0-d4ae52e95e57/skedeventselectronicmess.jpg)
Now, in the pantheon of BlackBerry inventions, this is cooler than many.
Just this morning, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published "Scheduling Events from Electronic Messages," a patent application from BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion that would enable extraction of appointment-related information from BlackBerry emails and then insert information about the appointment in a user's BlackBerry calendar.
In other words, if I send you an email saying, "let's meet with Jim Hogan at 1 p.m. on April 3, then you- the recipient- would have the option of exporting that text to your BlackBerry calendar for insertion at that time and date.
The Patent Abstract is a bit less clear, but since it articulates RIM's view of this invention's personality, let's go there.
Abstract says:
Scheduling an event on an electronic communications device configured for sending and receiving electronic messages over a communications network, including extracting information from an electronic message at the communications device; displaying on a display of the communications device an event scheduling interface for scheduling an event, the event scheduling interface having a plurality of input fields for receiving information about the event; and automatically populating at least one of the input fields in dependence on the extracted information.
Follow the link under the patent name for more deets.