Telephone caller location data retrieval
AssigneeBellSouth Intellectual Property Corporation
InventorSunil H. Contractor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for obtaining location data of calling parties for telephone calls provides location data for display by a called device. Through reception of the name, telephone number, or other calling party identifier as is done through the conventional caller ID service, the called device formulates a query to a database containing location data for calling parties. Existing advanced intelligent network infrastructure may be used to provide caller ID data to the called device, and the called device uses this caller ID data to formulate the query to the database. Additionally, the called device may have access to multiple databases containing location data and may detect an appropriate database to query based upon analysis of the caller ID data that has been received.
Claims20
A method for acquiring location data about a calling party at a called device, comprising:
- receiving, at the called device, an identifier of the calling party through signals from a connection to a signal switching point;
- detecting, at the called device, a particular database to query based on the received identifier from amongst a plurality of databases containing location data about calling parties that are indexed by identifiers;
- and
- querying, from the called device, the particular database that is detected to obtain the location data by looking-up the identifier received from the signal switching point to find the associated location data of the calling party.
A system for acquiring location data of a calling party, comprising:
- a called device that displays the location data;
- a signal switching point configured to forward an identifier of a calling party to the called device;
- a category list maintained by the called device and referenced when detecting an appropriate electronic database to query for location data, wherein the calling party identifier forwarded to the called device falls into a particular category within the list that identifies the particular database to query;
- and
- a plurality of electronic databases in communication with the called device, each containing location data indexed by identifiers of calling parties, wherein the called device sends a query to the particular electronic database upon receiving the identifier, the query containing the identifier, and wherein the electronic database looks up the identifier to access the location data provided to the called device.
A system for acquiring location data of a calling party, comprising:
- a telephone network;
- a computing device interfaced with the telephone network, the computing device being configured to receive an identifier of the calling party, detect an electronic database containing location data associated with the identifier, send a query containing the identifier to the detected database in response to receiving the identifier, and display the location data;
- and
- a plurality of electronic databases in communication with the computing device, the plurality of electronic databases containing location data for calling parties, the plurality of electronic databases being configured so that the detected electronic database from the plurality of electronic databases receives the query and looks up the identifier to obtain the location data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.