Patent Law Practice Center

Phone.com Patents Text Message Conferencing Method and System

Phone.com recently received U.S. Patent No. 8,571,588, titled Method and apparatus for conferencing of text messages.  The patented process, which essentially relates to text message conferencing, provides mobile phone users with a capability called Group SMS that shields the private numbers of their personal devices, exposing only their business phone numbers when they text or make business calls.

The patent explains the problem with the prior art:

Despite the huge popularity of SMS with the public, it has not been successful in a conferencing environment, particularly, one involving interactive communications among groups of users (few-to-few users) or one-to-few users in a controlled group. Although modern SMS clients, such as the iPhone®, can send a one-to-few message, the recipients do not have any indication that they need to respond to multiple parties. Therefore, there exists a substantial need in the art for effective conferencing in text messaging, such as SMS, communications.

The system and method disclosed implement text messaging conference among at least three users who communicate on different communication channels. A conference is initiated with a message from a first user, which is received on a communication channel, and commands the initiation of a text message conference. This message includes identities of a number of users asked to participate in the messaging conference. A second set of conferencing communication channels that are different from the first communication channel (used to initiate the conference) are then dedicated to each conference participant. The users then communicate messages over the new conferencing communication channels, with a message received over one conferencing communication channel being forwarded to the other users participating in the messaging conference via their respective communication channels.

(more…)