Communication system and terminal units connected thereto

• US 7,584,431 B2
• Filed: 12/02/2003
• Issued: 09/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/14/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Maxell, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Okamura, Shinichiro, Kondo, Nobukazu, Kazushige, Hiroi, Ogiwara, Kazuchika, Yokozawa, Tooru, Umemura, Masaya, Hara, Tsutomu
• Primary Examiner(s): Vu; Thanh T
• Application Number:
  US10/724,778
• Publication Number:
  US 20040139052A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,100 Days
• Field of Search: 715/751, 715/752, 715/753, 715/755, 715/758
• US Class Current: 715/751
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/131 Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A communication system including a network and at least two terminal units connected thereto. Each terminal unit includes a session controlling unit for controlling a session for enabling transmission/receiving of voice, image, handwritten data to/from the remote terminal unit individually, and a display unit for displaying the image and the handwritten data. The image data and the handwritten data are overlapped and displayed on a display of the display unit.

Claims

1. A communication system comprising:

a network; and

at least two terminal units connected thereto,

wherein each terminal unit comprises;

session controlling means for controlling a session for enabling transmission/receiving of voice, image, and handwritten data to/from a remote terminal unit individually;

display means for displaying said image and said handwritten data,

wherein said image data and said handwritten data are overlapped and displayed on a display of said display means;

an image/handwritten data managing means for managing image/handwritten data,

wherein the image/handwritten data managing means has a plurality of planes,

wherein the managing means displays basic image data on one of the plurality of planes, the one of the plurality of planes being an image data plane, and displays handwritten data currently handled in communication on a different plane, the different plane being a handwritten data plane, so that image and handwritten data are displayed so as to overlap each other by putting the different planes in layers,

wherein the session controlling means comprises means for starting and ending voice communication, image communication and handwritten data communication independently, and

wherein said means for starting and ending voice communication, image communication and handwritten data communication independently is configured to make at least one of the image communication, handwritten data communication, and voice communication at a high quality, and end other communications even when a through-put of the terminal unit or a number of communication bands is insufficient,

wherein each terminal unit further comprises;

erasing/information transmitting means for erasing image and handwritten data from the display means through the image/handwritten data managing means and transmitting erasure information to the remote terminal unit,

wherein in the terminal unit, the erasing/information transmitting means can select either image or handwritten data or both of image and handwritten data as an object to be erased and erase a selected object from the display means; and

an erasing/information receiving means for erasing image and handwritten data from the display means through the image/handwritten data managing means according to the erasure information from the remote terminal unit,

wherein in the terminal unit, the erasing/information transmitting means notifies the remote terminal unit of completion of the object erasure in return for the erasure information so that the remote terminal erases the object from its display means according to the notice.

2. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein transmission/receiving of voice data is capable while said image data and/or handwritten data are displayed.

3. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein in the terminal unit, the image/handwritten data managing means, when having transmitted/received image data, adjusts sizes of the image data plane and the handwritten data plane to the size of the transmitted/received image data.

4. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein the terminal unit further comprises:

storing means for storing data to be processed by the self terminal unit,

wherein the storing means can select either image or handwritten data or both of image and handwritten data as an object to be stored and stores the selected object in a storage means.

5. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein in the terminal unit said session controlling means, when starting and ending image and/or handwritten data communication, can transmit/receive image and/or handwritten data from/to the remote terminal unit registered beforehand without requiring the permission of the receiving-side user.

6. The communication system according to claim 5, wherein in the terminal unit, the session controlling means, when starting and ending a voice session, receives voice data from the remote terminal unit registered beforehand without requiring permission of the receiving-side user.

7. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein each terminal unit further comprises:

a handwritten data controlling means for controlling transmission/receiving of handwritten data,

wherein said handwritten data controlling means collects a sampled handwritten data in a chunk at the predetermined number of sampling times to transmit/receive the chunk of sampled handwritten data, and

wherein in the terminal unit, the handwritten data controlling means denotes whether or not a notice is received at each chunk of data alternately between the two subject terminal units.

8. The communication system according to claim 7, wherein in the terminal unit, the handwritten data controlling means permits editing of handwritten data on the handwritten data plane while the handwritten data controlling means prohibits editing of image data on the image data plane.

9. The communication system according to claim 1, wherein each terminal unit further comprises:

a display controlling means for displaying image and handwritten data on the display means according to instructions received from the image/handwritten data managing means,

wherein the display controlling means prepares the coordinate systems for both the basic image data and handwritten data, enables a position pointed by handwritten data to be exchanged between two terminal units, and

wherein in the terminal unit, the display controlling means enable to automatically scroll both of the image data and the handwritten data to display both of the data on the display means of the remote terminal unit if the position pointed by the handwritten data might not be displayed on the display means of the one terminal unit.