Audiographics conferencing arrangement
First Claim
1. An arrangement for establishing an audiographics conference connection among a plurality of telephone station sets and associated data terminals served by a communication system having a common bus, said telephone station sets and associated data terminals having access to said common bus via respective port circuits, said arrangement comprising;
- a data bridge having a plurality of port circuits, each of said port circuits having access to said common bus;
means for establishing with respect to said common bus a plurality of time slots, each time slot defining a period of time in which a signal may be placed onto said bus by any one of said port circuits and obtained from said bus by one or more other port circuits;
means responsive to a request inputted by a user at one of said data terminals for establishing a communication path between said one data terminal and said data bridge by assigning respective time slots to said one data terminal and one of said data bridge port circuits;
means responsive to receipt of a first series of individual requests respectively identifying the telephone station set associated with said one data terminal and other ones of said telephone station sets for establishing a conference connection among said identified station sets by assigning respective time slots to said station sets as they are identified,means responsive to receipt of a second series of individual requests for establishing a communication path between each of the data terminals associated with said other station sets and respective ones of a group of data bridge ports by assigning respective time slots to those data terminals and said ones of said data bridge ports, said first and second series of individual requests being inputted by said user, andmeans operative for allocating to each of said data terminals as they are connected to said data bridge a group of logical channels for use in exchanging respective categories of messages, said messages being indicative of respective categories of information displayed on said data terminals.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An audiographics conferencing arrangement for use in a business communication system allows the conferees to exchange displayed text and/or graphics stored locally in their respective data terminals. The conferees may change the displayed text and/or graphics and such changes are automatically distributed to the other data terminals so that all of the conferees view the same information. Moreover, a data terminal and its associated telephone station set may be included in an audiographics conference connection even though they are not directly served by the business communication system. In addition, one of the conferees may establish concurrent with the original audiographics conference connection a second audiographics conference connection with one or more other data terminals and transfer information obtained from one conference connection to the other conference connection.
715 Citations
39 Claims
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1. An arrangement for establishing an audiographics conference connection among a plurality of telephone station sets and associated data terminals served by a communication system having a common bus, said telephone station sets and associated data terminals having access to said common bus via respective port circuits, said arrangement comprising;
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a data bridge having a plurality of port circuits, each of said port circuits having access to said common bus; means for establishing with respect to said common bus a plurality of time slots, each time slot defining a period of time in which a signal may be placed onto said bus by any one of said port circuits and obtained from said bus by one or more other port circuits; means responsive to a request inputted by a user at one of said data terminals for establishing a communication path between said one data terminal and said data bridge by assigning respective time slots to said one data terminal and one of said data bridge port circuits; means responsive to receipt of a first series of individual requests respectively identifying the telephone station set associated with said one data terminal and other ones of said telephone station sets for establishing a conference connection among said identified station sets by assigning respective time slots to said station sets as they are identified, means responsive to receipt of a second series of individual requests for establishing a communication path between each of the data terminals associated with said other station sets and respective ones of a group of data bridge ports by assigning respective time slots to those data terminals and said ones of said data bridge ports, said first and second series of individual requests being inputted by said user, and means operative for allocating to each of said data terminals as they are connected to said data bridge a group of logical channels for use in exchanging respective categories of messages, said messages being indicative of respective categories of information displayed on said data terminals. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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14. An audiographics conferencing arrangement for use in a business communication system serving a plurality of data terminals, said arrangemetn comprising;
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a data bridge, means responsive to receipt of a series of requests inputted by a user positioned at one of said data terminals for established a conference connection among said one data terminal and other ones of said data terminals by connecting each of said conferenced data terminals to said data bridge via respective communication paths responsive to respective ones of said requests, and means operative for assigning to each of said data terminals as they are connected to said data bridge a group of logical channels identifying respective catagories of messages, said data terminals multiplexing their assigned logical channels over their respective communications paths when exchanging message with each other. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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26. An arrangements for processing different categories of messages received via associated logical channels multiplexed over respective communication paths, individual ones of said communications paths being associated with respective ones of a group of data terminals, said arrangement comprising;
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means responsive to receipt of a message from one of said data terminals via its respective one of said communication paths for identifying the category of a message based on the logical channel in which said message was received, and means thereafter operative for distributing to other ones of said group of data terminals said received message, said message being sent to said other data terminals via their respective communication paths and in their logical channels identifying category of said message. - View Dependent Claims (27, 28, 29, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39)
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Specification