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:
Jan. 14, 2014
Filed:
Sep. 14, 2006
Simon Brueckheimer, London, GB;
Ian Domville, Wallingford, GB;
Simon Brueckheimer, London, GB;
Ian Domville, Wallingford, GB;
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
The invention makes use of the Short Message Service (SMS) or Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) capabilities present in today's cellular networks as a means of providing call control and presence signalling and, in particular, for providing the means of effecting hand-off at least from/to the cellular domain to/from the WiFi domain. SMS and USSD were originally designed as engineering channels, but SMS has become highly popular as a service in its own right. SMS and USSD are built into all existing cellular (GSM, CDMA etc.) network and predate the current GPRS overlay. In particular, SMS and USSD can be used while a call may be active in the cellular domain, and a handset may send and receive such messages, with an additional facility which may be used by the invention of receiving acknowledgements of successful receipt of an outgoing SMS by the messaged party—effectively a confirmation from the network. The present invention proposes to use SMS or USSD as a means of an adjunct call control and presence signalling in the cellular domain between a handset and the SIP domain.