The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 13, 1997
Filed:
May. 01, 1995
Hien Tang, Orange, CA (US);
Randy A Cwikowski, Dana Point, CA (US);
Alistair Egan, Lake Forest, CA (US);
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
Method and apparatus for delivering multi-media messages which may include text components, image components, sound components or binary components to multiple recipients over different transmission media. A list of recipients of the multi-media message is inspected to determine all of the different transmission media that will be needed to transmit to all the recipients. The list of recipients may be obtained from an address portion of the multi-media message, and may, for example, consist of the direct recipients of a message, the carbon copy ('cc:') recipients of the message, and the blind carbon copy ('bcc:') recipients of the message. It is possible for each recipient to receive various components of the multi-media message by different media. Then, for each component of the message that is incompatible with all needed transmission media, the component is converted into equivalent components whose types are compatible with all the different transmission media. Thus, for example, if a multi-media message includes a text component, then an equivalent image component is created for the facsimile medium by conversion of the text file to an image file, and equivalent audio component is created for the voice telephone medium by conversion of the text file into an audio file via text-to-speech technology. A message delivery schedule is then formed, which lists, for each recipient, the medium to be used and the message component (original component or equivalent component) to be delivered. The messages are then delivered according to the delivery schedule.