Technique for linking telephony and multimedia information
AssigneeAT&T Corp.
InventorsPaul J Fellingham, Christopher P Gilboy
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The parties (12, 14) to a telephone call can exchange multimedia information by sending each other a URL that identifies the party's information. Each party may communicate its URL to the other party in the form of a caller identification message for receipt by the other party on a caller identification device (18) connected to computer (20). Upon receipt of the URL, the computer will access the Internet to retrieve the multimedia information corresponding to the URL. Rather than communicate its URL in the form of a caller identification message, each party may communicate its URL to the other in a call set-up signaling message in connection with an Internet Protocol telephone call.
Claims19
A method for providing multimedia information to at least one of a calling and called parties to a telephone call, comprising the steps of:
- receiving, in a telecommunications network, a telephone call launched by the calling party to the called party;
- establishing, for the called party, at least one Universal Resource Locator (URL) that identifies multimedia information associated with said called party;
- communicating said at least one URL to the calling party and displaying said at least one URL as a visual message for said calling party;
- retrieving the multimedia information identified by said at least one URL;
- and
- providing said multimedia information to said calling party.
A method for providing multimedia information to the calling and called parties to a telephone call, comprising the steps of:
- receiving, in a telecommunications network, a telephone call launched by the calling party to the called party;
- establishing, for each of the calling and called parties, at least one Universal Resource Locator (URL) that identifies multimedia information associated with the calling and called parties, in accordance with telephone numbers of the calling and called parties, respectively;
- transmitting the URL of the calling and called parties to the called and calling parties, respectively;
- displaying the transmitted URLs on display devices associated with the called and calling parties;
- retrieving the multimedia information identified by the URL of the calling and called parties;
- and
- providing said multimedia information corresponding to the calling and called party's URL to the called and calling parties, respectively.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.