I am driving/busy automatic response system for mobile phones

• US 20110151852A1
• Filed: 02/08/2010
• Published: 06/23/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Julia Olincy, Ronald C. Fish
• Original Assignee: Julia Olincy, Ronald C. Fish
• Inventors: Olincy, Julia, Fish, Ronald C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,359,014 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/418
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72436 for text messaging, e.g. short messaging services [SMS] or e-mails
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72454 according to context-related or environment-related conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/651 Text message transmission triggered by call
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]

Abstract

A cell phone which has been modified by the addition of software which responds to the press of one or more Busy keys by automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the sender of the latest text message just received or automatically answering an incoming call immediately upon pressing the Busy key and playing a pre-recorded audio message. The outgoing text or audio message can inform the sender of the incoming text or the caller that the user is driving or otherwise engaged and cannot respond immediately. In some embodiments, one or more Busy keys can be added keys or one or more existing keys on the cell phone or on the keypad of the cell phone or on a touchscreen or a visual depiction of a keypad on a touchscreen of the cell phone. In some embodiments, only the text of the automated reply message is entered automatically, and all other commands to launch the SMS service, select the text message to reply to and send the automated reply message are manually given.

Claims

1. A process comprising:

A) receiving a text message on a cell phone;

B) manually entering whatever command or commands are necessary on said cell phone to select and launch a Short Message Service (hereafter SMS) text message application on said cell phone;

C) manually entering whatever command or commands are necessary on said cell phone to select the SMS text message received most recently and display it;

D) manually entering whatever command or commands are necessary to put said SMS text message application into reply mode to reply to said text message selected and displayed in step C;

E) receiving a command to execute a macro or program to automatically enter the text of an automated reply message, and responding to said command by automatically entering the text of the reply text message into a buffer memory that stores the text of a text message to be sent, the content of said buffer memory being displayed in a field on said cell phone, said automatically entered text stored in said buffer memory having words to the effect the user of said cell phone is driving or is busy and cannot or chooses to not respond immediately.

2. The process of claim 1 further comprising a step F of automatically giving a send command after said text of said automated reply message is entered to cause said cell phone to send said automated reply message as a text message.

3. The process of claim 1 further comprising a step F of manually giving a send command after said text of said automated reply message is entered to cause said cell phone to send said automated reply message as a text message.

4. [FIG. 10] A process carried out on a cell phone comprising the steps:

A) receiving a text message on said cell phone or receiving an incoming cellular phone call on said cell phone;

B) detecting a push of a Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) on said cell phone and sending that event to an operating system of said cell phone with a request to send to a Busy application program on said cell phone the time of the Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) push and the time the latest SMS text message was received in the case of a Busy key (SMS) push or information on whether an incoming call is currently ringing said cell phone in the case of a Busy key (Call) push;

C) making a function call to said Busy application program to launch it after receiving information that either said Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) was pushed and sending the information requested in step C to said Busy application program;

D) determining if said Busy key (SMS) was pushed within a predetermined time of the time of receipt of the latest SMS text message, and, if so, doing whatever steps are necessary on the host cell phone upon which said Busy application program is running to automatically select the latest text message received and automatically send a pre-typed text message to the sender of said latest text message without any further interaction with said user of said cell phone;

E) if said Busy key (SMS) was not pushed within a predetermined time of receipt of the latest text message, determining if said Busy key (Call) was pushed while an incoming cell call was ringing said cell phone, and, if so, doing whatever steps are necessary on the host cell phone upon which said automated response application program is running to automatically answer an incoming cell phone and play a pre-recorded audio message to said caller; and

F) if steps E and F determine that neither the Busy key (SMS) was pushed within a predetermined time of receipt of the latest SMS text message nor the Busy key (Call) was pushed while an incoming phone call is ringing said cell phone, then shutting down said Busy application program.

5. [FIG. 9] The process of claim 4 wherein step F further comprises carrying out whatever steps are required on said cell phone executing said Busy application to divert said incoming call to voicemail after playing said pre-recorded audio message.

6. [FIG. 11] A process carried out on a cell phone comprising the steps:

A) receiving an incoming SMS text message or an incoming phone call;

B) detecting a push of a Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) on said cell phone and sending that event to an operating system of said cell phone with a request to send to a Busy application program on said cell phone the time of the Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) push;

C) sending a function call to a Busy application program on said cell phone with the time of the Busy key push and which Busy key was pushed;

D) launching said Busy application program on said phone when said function call in step C is sent and starting a timer and incrementing a count of the number of pushes of the particular one of the Busy keys which was pushed;

E) determining if the same Busy key was pushed X time in Y seconds, which of the Busy key (SMS) or Busy key (Call) was pushed X times in Y seconds;

F) if said Busy key (SMS) was pushed X times in Y seconds, doing whatever steps are necessary on the host cell phone upon which said Busy application program is running to automatically select the latest text message received and automatically send a pre-typed text message to the sender of said latest text message without any further interaction with said user of said cell phone; and

G) if said Busy key (Call) was pushed X times in Y seconds, doing whatever steps are necessary on the host cell phone upon which said automated response application program is running to automatically answer an incoming cell phone and play a pre-recorded audio message to said caller.