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. 04, 2004
Filed:
Aug. 31, 1999
James Hirni, Hollis, NH (US);
Michael Ely, Pelham, NH (US);
Bruce Cottle, North Chelmsford, MA (US);
Christopher Gindel, Winchester, MA (US);
Robert D'Angelo, Windham, NH (US);
Aspect Communications Corp., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A telephony system for conducting multimedia telephonic communications across a packet-based network is described between a caller system and an agent system through a software switch. The software switch receives from the caller system a packet representing a request to conduct a multimedia telephonic conference with an agent system. The switch exchanges packets with the caller system to establish a call with the caller system. The switch provides an application program interface to a telephony application program through which the telephony application program can control multimedia telephonic conferences between the caller and agent systems. The switch then processes the call according to the commands received through the application program interface from the telephony application program. In one embodiment, the application is an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), which routes calls through the software switch. In another embodiment, a CTI subsystem provides an interface to a CTI server so that the ACD can work together with standard PSTN call centers.