Call control in video conferencing allowing acceptance and identification of participants in a new incoming call during an active teleconference
First Claim
1. A teleconferencing system for conducting a teleconference among a plurality of participants comprising:
- (a) a plurality of workstations associated with a corresponding plurality of participants, each workstation including a monitor;
(b) AV capture capabilities at each workstation configured to capture the image and voice of the participants; and
(c) an incoming call acceptance mechanism capable of detecting an incoming teleconference call, from at least one calling participant, at the workstation of a first participant and, if the first participant is engaged in an active teleconference with a second participant, notifying the first participant of the identity of each calling participant forming a part of the incoming teleconference call and providing the first participant with the option of accepting the incoming teleconference call.
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0 Petitions
Reexamination
Accused Products
Abstract
A multimedia collaboration system that integrates separate real-time and asynchronous networks--the former for real-time audio and video, and the latter for control signals and textual, graphical and other data--in a manner that is interoperable across different computer and network operating system platforms and which closely approximates the experience of face-to-face collaboration, while liberating the participants from the limitations of time and distance. These capabilities are achieved by exploiting a variety of hardware, software and networking technologies in a manner that preserves the quality and integrity of audio/video/data and other multimedia information, even after wide area transmission, and at a significantly reduced networking cost as compared to what would be required by presently known approaches. The system architecture is readily scalable to the largest enterprise network environments. It accommodates differing levels of collaborative capabilities available to individual users and permits high-quality audio and video capabilities to be readily superimposed onto existing personal computers and workstations and their interconnecting LANs and WANs. In a particular preferred embodiment, a plurality of geographically dispersed multimedia LANs are interconnected by a WAN. The demands made on the WAN are significantly reduced by employing multi-hopping techniques, including dynamically avoiding the unnecessary decompression of data at intermediate hops, and exploiting video mosaicing, cut-and-paste and audio mixing technologies so that significantly fewer wide area transmission paths are required while maintaining the high quality of the transmitted audio/video.
679 Citations
37 Claims
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1. A teleconferencing system for conducting a teleconference among a plurality of participants comprising:
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(a) a plurality of workstations associated with a corresponding plurality of participants, each workstation including a monitor; (b) AV capture capabilities at each workstation configured to capture the image and voice of the participants; and (c) an incoming call acceptance mechanism capable of detecting an incoming teleconference call, from at least one calling participant, at the workstation of a first participant and, if the first participant is engaged in an active teleconference with a second participant, notifying the first participant of the identity of each calling participant forming a part of the incoming teleconference call and providing the first participant with the option of accepting the incoming teleconference call. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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22. A method for conducting a teleconference among a plurality of participants, comprising the steps of:
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(a) detecting an incoming teleconference call, from at least one calling participant, at the workstation of a first participant during an active teleconference with a second participant; (b) notifying the first participant of the identity of each of the calling participants ; and (c) providing the first participant with the option of accepting the incoming teleconference call. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)
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Specification