Michael Dean Lilley

Title: Michael Dean Lilley and Telecommunications Software Upgrade Patents.

Introduction

Michael Dean Lilley is an inventor associated with Missoula, Montana, and Lucent Technologies Inc. His work includes inventions for assessing and monitoring software upgrades on telecommunications switches. He holds 2 patents.

Latest Patents

Lilley’s listed patents address different stages of upgrading or retrofitting a telecommunications switch.

“Method and apparatus for analyzing the progress of a software upgrade on a telecommunications switch” describes a system that monitors text messages reporting switch status and events. It detects messages marking retrofit stages, failures, alarms, and errors, then tracks how long each stage takes against an expected duration. A client interface displays progress and highlights delays, alarms, and errors, with some alerts also provided audibly.

“Method and apparatus for determining whether the immediate state of a telecommunications switch is adequate for a software upgrade” describes a method for evaluating a switch before an upgrade. The system detects messages about hardware errors, alarms, and other problems, assigns them numerical values reflecting potential retrofit failure risk, and accumulates those values. If the total exceeds a threshold, the switch is deemed unsuitable for the retrofit. The method also checks whether enough time has elapsed to make the assessment reliable, while a user interface presents the switch’s readiness and organizes detected issues by subsystem and failure type.

Career Highlights

The listed inventions reflect Lilley’s work on software-upgrade readiness and progress monitoring for telecommunications infrastructure. Both focus on using operational messages and interface displays to help users identify risks and follow retrofit activity.

Collaborations

Lilley’s listed coworkers include John Frank Saban and John Patrick Shea. The provided information does not specify their roles in the patents.

Conclusion

Michael Dean Lilley’s two listed patents address complementary challenges in telecommunications switch upgrades: determining whether a switch is ready and monitoring the retrofit as it proceeds.