METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ESTABLISHING A DATA LINK BASED ON A POTS CONNECTION

• US 20100202599A1
• Filed: 02/09/2009
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Applied Invention, LLC
• Original Assignee: Applied Minds LLC
• Inventors: Howe, Russel, Chapman, Neal E., Yates, Randall Adam, Kumar, Dev, Hillis, W. Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 8,542,807 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/93.210
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/2478 Telephone terminals specially adapted for non-voice services, e.g. email, internet access centralized arrangements where telephones services are combined H04M7/0024; for recording text messages H04M3/5322; for accessing Internet H04M3/4938
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 11/066 Telephone sets adapted for data transmision
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/56 Arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities video conference systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/122 where the PSTN/ISDN access is used as an access to networks other than PSTN/ISDN access arrangements to networks other than PSTN/ISDN H04M7/0066; access arrangements to public data networks H04L12/2856

Abstract

In a communications system, after parties form a dial up voice telephone connection, the parties respective communications devices automatically create or leverage machine readable features or content of the telephone connection to identify the parties to each other or to a rendezvous server, and thereafter the communications devices and/or the rendezvous server automatically establishes a data link between the parties.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method to establish a data link between parties, each party having a computer and a dial up telephone, the method comprising operations of:

using the telephones, the parties establishing a dial up telephone connection over a public telephone network either directly or via conference calling bridge;

the computers connecting to a prescribed packet data network and acquiring addresses on said network;

any of the computers, the telephones, or the conference calling bridge identifying the parties to any of the computers or a rendezvous server, the identifying operation carried out by any of generating and communicating machine-readable acoustical signals over the telephone connection, by employing machine-readable features of the telephone connection, or by employing computational analysis of acoustical content of the telephone connection;

any of the computers or the rendezvous server using said identification of the parties to establish a data link between the computers via the network and said addresses on the network; and

the computers employing the established data link to exchange multimedia content representing human-readable communications between the parties.

2. The method of claim 1, where each party'"'"'s telephone is electrically connected to or integrated into said party'"'"'s computer, and the computer is programmed to perform any of the following:

employ the telephone to exchange machine-readable acoustic signals with other parties'"'"' telephones;

receive from the telephone caller-ID codes identifying a source telephone number of incoming calls; and

receive acoustic content of calls conducted by the telephone.

3. The method of claim 1, the identifying operation comprising the operation of:

the parties'"'"' computers identifying themselves to each other by exchanging audible, machine-readable acoustic signals over the telephone connection, said signals representing the computers'"'"' network addresses or other indicia identifying the parties.

4. The method of claim 3, the operation of establishing a data link between the computers comprises one of the following operations:

the parties'"'"' computers forming a data link over the network using identifications exchanged over the telephone connection;

the parties'"'"' computers submitting the identifications exchanged over the telephone connection to a rendezvous server attached to the network, and thereafter the rendezvous server forming or directing the computers to form a data link via the network.

5. The method of claim 1, the identifying operation comprising the operation of:

the telephones each placing a dial up telephone call to a predetermined conference calling bridge and the bridge employing caller-ID codes to identify the parties.

6. The method of claim 5, the operation of establishing a data link between the computers comprises the operations of:

the bridge relaying the parties'"'"' caller-ID information to the rendezvous server;

each party'"'"'s computer initiating a data link with the rendezvous server via the network and transmitting a request including a telephone number associated with said party;

the rendezvous server receiving and comparing the caller-ID information from the bridge and the telephone numbers from the requests;

the rendezvous server selecting computers whose requests match caller-ID information from the bridge, and forming or directing the selected computers to form a data link via the network.

7. The method of claim 1, the identifying operation comprising the operation of:

each computer conducting a prescribed computational analysis of content conducted over the telephone connection to form one or more soundprints and submitting the soundprints to the rendezvous server.

8. The method of claim 7, the operation of establishing a data link between the computers comprises the operations of:

the rendezvous server comparing soundprints received from the computers, and upon finding a match between soundprints, forming or directing the computers that submitted the matching soundprints to form a data link via the network.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising the operations of:

each party'"'"'s computer capturing or receiving a respective user image, and after the data link is established, said computer exchanging user images over the data link with others of the computers participating in the data link;

each party'"'"'s computer recognizing when a local user is speaking and in response transmitting an active-speaker flag over the data link;

only when a given party'"'"'s computer transmits an active-speaker flag, each other party'"'"'s computer operating a video display to present or highlight display of the given party'"'"'s user image.

10. The method of claim 1, where the operations further comprise:

one of the computers generating and transmitting human audible prompt upon the telephone connection; and

as a condition to admitting a given party to the data link, requiring the given party to operate the party'"'"'s computer to enter a prescribed response to said prompt.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising the operations of:

each computer participating in the data link computing an authentication token by conducting prescribed computational analysis of substantially all acoustical content represented by data exchanged over the data link;

the computers determining whether the data link experienced any tampering by comparing respective authentication tokens, where presence of prescribed differences in the authentication tokens indicates tampering.

12. A computer implemented method to establish a data link between parties, each party having a computer and a dial up telephone, the method comprising the steps of:

a step for, using the telephones, the parties establishing a dial up telephone connection over a public telephone network either directly or via conference calling bridge;

a step for the computers connecting to a prescribed packet data network and acquiring addresses on said network;

a step for any of the computers, the telephones, or the conference calling bridge identifying the parties to any of the computers or a rendezvous server, the identifying operation carried out by any of generating and communicating machine-readable acoustical signals over the telephone connection, by employing machine-readable features of the telephone connection, or by employing computational analysis of acoustical content of the telephone connection;

a step for any of the computers or the rendezvous server using said identification of the parties to establish a data link between the computers via the network and said addresses on the network; and

a step for the computers employing the established data link to exchange multimedia content representing human-readable communications between the parties.

13. A computer-implemented method of forming a data link between two or more parties each party having a computer and a telephone, where each computer has an address on a prescribed digital data communications network, the method comprising operations of:

forming a dial up telephone connection between the parties'"'"' telephones either directly or via conference calling bridge;

any of the computers and a rendezvous server connected to any of the network or a combination of the computers and the rendezvous server using the telephone connection to identify all parties to the telephone connection and the network addresses of the parties'"'"' computers and form a data link via the network between the computers of the identified parties to the telephone connection;

wherein the use of the telephone connection includes any of the following;

generating and exchanging machine-readable acoustical data over the telephone connection, sensing caller ID information of one or more parties'"'"' telephones, and analyzing acoustical content of the telephone connection.

14. A computer-implemented method of forming a data link between two or more parties each party having a computer and a telephone, where each computer has an address on a prescribed digital data communications network, the method comprising steps of:

a step for forming a dial up telephone connection between the parties'"'"' telephones either directly or via conference calling bridge;

a step for any of the computers and a rendezvous server connected to any of the network or a combination of the computers and the rendezvous server using the telephone connection to identify all parties to the telephone connection and the network addresses of the parties'"'"' computers and form a data link via the network between the computers of the identified parties to the telephone connection;

wherein the use of the telephone connection includes any of the following;

generating and exchanging machine-readable acoustical data over the telephone connection, sensing caller ID information of one or more parties'"'"' telephones, and analyzing acoustical content of the telephone connection.

15. A communications system used by multiple parties, comprising:

associated with each party, a computer and a telephone electrically coupled or integrated to the computer;

where the foregoing components are programmed as follows;

the computers connecting to a prescribed packet data network and acquiring addresses on said network;

responsive to the parties using the telephones to establish a dial up telephone connection over a public telephone network either directly or via conference calling bridge, any of the computers, the telephones, and the conference calling bridge identifying the parties to any of the computers or a rendezvous server, the identifying operation carried out by any of generating and communicating machine-readable acoustical signals over the telephone connection, by employing machine-readable features of the telephone connection, and by employing computational analysis of acoustical content of the telephone connection;

any of the computers and the rendezvous server using said identification of the parties to establish a data link between the computers via the network and said addresses on the network; and

the computers employing the established data link to exchange multimedia content representing human-readable communications between the parties.

16. A communications system used by multiple parties, comprising:

associated with each party, a computer and a dial up telephone;

a rendezvous server;

a conference calling bridge;

where the foregoing components are programmed as follows;

the computers connecting to a prescribed packet data network and acquiring addresses on said network;

responsive to the parties operating their telephones to establish a dial up telephone connection over a public telephone network via the bridge, the bridge using caller-ID codes to identify the parties;

the bridge relaying the parties'"'"' caller-ID information to the rendezvous server;

each party'"'"'s computer initiating a data link with the rendezvous server and transmitting a request including a telephone number associated with said party;

the rendezvous server receiving and comparing the caller-ID information from the bridge and the telephone numbers from the requests; and

the rendezvous server selecting computers whose requests match caller-ID information from the bridge, and forming or directing the selected computers to form a data link via the network.