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An ICM clone from Ericsson:
www10.nytimes.com
164.195.100.11
(For USP 5,946,381)
164.195.100.11
(For USP 5,809,128)
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September 6, 1999
PATENTS
Easing Telephone-Line Congestion
By SABRA CHARTRAND
For the last few years, phone companies throughout the country
have been busy adding new area codes to metropolitan regions
to accommodate the rising demand for new phone numbers. In
Seattle, where for decades one area code covered the area, there
are now three. Callers in the two new areas must dial 10 digits for
every call, and so must people in the city who phone the suburbs.
Many of these new area-code calls are now billed as long-distance
calls.
It is a cumbersome solution to the threat of running out of phone
numbers altogether, as more people demand separate lines for their
telephones, faxes and modems. After all, you cannot receive calls if
your line is tied up on the Internet.
Now, three Swedish inventors have won a patent for an invention that
aims to ease such congestion and perhaps eliminate the need for
costly multiple lines. Their invention routes conventional phone calls
to a World Wide Web site that then notifies a user of an incoming
phone call in much the same way that e-mail systems report that a
person has new mail.
The three -- Anders Danne, Goran Bangge and Hans Hall -- have
designed a system in which a window pops up on a computer screen
to notify a user that a call is coming in over the telephone line, and
the window comes with buttons that the user can click on to answer
the phone, ignore the call, put the caller on hold, take a message or
redirect the call elsewhere.
But first, potential users must subscribe to the system. Then,
incoming calls are routed through a phone network where information
about the person calling is deciphered from their phone number. That
information might include the caller's name, a company name or an
address. The network then determines whether the person being
called is a paid-up subscriber. If so, software in the system activates a
connection with a Web site and sends an alert message to the
subscriber's personal computer.
The window would also incorporate caller ID technology to include
information about the caller so that anyone using a phone line to surf
the Internet could decide whether or not to take the call without first
logging off.
The invention won patent number 5,946,381.
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The US patent office didn't even cite IIA's US patent 5,809,128 during the prosecution of Ericsson's application which led to the issue of US patent 5,946,381!!
The US patent 5,946,381 to Ericsson uses the WWW and a proxy server, see claim 2.
Is IIA's US patent 5,809,128 infringed by this Ericsson development? And is the Ericsson US patent 5,946,381 even valid in view of IIA's US patent 5,809,128?
Ericsson, another giant gorilla to contend with! First Nortel, now Ericsson, and soon Lucent! Anyway, it shows that this field is mighty important, even though our stock price doesn't fully reflect it. And we're way out front with the technology anyway! And first to market! What's to worry about!...Maybe Ericsson will need a license from IIA under IIA's US patent 5,809,128 to work their US patent 5,946,381!!
Cheers,
Don |
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