Mitel Networks Corporation et al v. Facebook Inc.

Filing 1

COMPLAINT filed with Jury Demand against Facebook Inc. - Magistrate Consent Notice to Pltf. ( Filing fee $ 350, receipt number 311-1040023.) - filed by Mitel Networks Corporation, Mitel (Delaware) Inc.. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit B, # 3 Civil Cover Sheet)(dmp, )

Exhibit B

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1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
US007292685B2

United States Patent

(10)

Gray

(12)

(45)

(54)

PRO-ACTIVE FEATURES FOR TELEPHONY

(75)

Inventor:

Assignee: Mitel Knowledge Corporation,
Ontario (CA)

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Notice:

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Appl. No.: 10/310,558

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Filed:

Subject to any disclaimer, the tenn of this
patent is extended or adjusted under 35
U.S.c. 154(b) by 186 days.

Dec. 5, 2002

(65)

(52)
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Jun. 12, 2003

Int. Cl.
H04M 3/42
G06F 15/173
G06F 17/00
H04J 3/16
H04J 3/22
G06N 5/02
U.S. Cl. ................ .

(2006.01)
(2006.01)
(2006.01)
(2006.01)
(2006.01)
(2006.01)
3791201.02; 370/466; 709/223;
706/49
Field of Classification Search ........... 379/201.02,
3791188; 707/10, 101; 370/466,238; 709/213,
709/223; 706/49
See application file for complete search history.

(56)

References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
5,197,096
5,963,947
5,974,420
5,987,113

A
A *
A *
A
200210146097 Al

311993
1011999
1011999
1111999

Sakuma et al.
Ford et al. .................... 707/10
Lehman et al. ............. 707/101
James
1012002 Vuori

FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS
EP

1071295 A2

Nov. 6,2007
112001

Search Report of Great Britain Application No. 9927595.0.
Office Action dated Apr. 11, 2008 from the Canadian Intellectual
Property Office for a foreign counterpart application No. 2,413,574.
Kanter, "An Application Architecture for Mobile Interactive
Spaces", Work-in progress presentation at the third IEE Workshop
on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA2000),
Monterey, Dec. 2000.
Buhr et al., "Feature-Interaction Visualization and Resolution in an
Agent Environment", Fifth International Workshop on Feature
Interactions in Telecommunications and Software Systems
(FIW'98), Lund, Sweden, Oct. 1998. lOS Press, Amsterdam, pp.
135-149.

(Continued)

Prior Publication Data

US 2003/0108173 Al

2351870

US 7,292,685 B2

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Thomas Gray, Carp (CA)

(73)

(51)

GB

Patent No.:
Date of Patent:

Primary Examiner-Harry S. Hong
Assistant Examiner-Thjuan K. Addy
(74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm-F. Chau & Associates, LLC
(57)

ABSTRACT

A system is provided for pro-actively suggesting communication features to users, comprising a tuple space for
facilitating collaboration among software agents, a plurality
of device agents for controlling operation of associated
communication devices for respective ones of the users, and
a plurality of user agents representing a plurality of users,
each of the user agents (i) facilitating creation, by a user
desirous of communicating, of groups of users to be communicated with, (ii) poking tuples to the tuple space indicative of each user's availability for communication; (iii)
peeking anti-tuples to the tuple space for eliciting communication availability of respective ones of the users in the
groups of users to be communicated with and in response
causing associated device agents to display via respective
ones of the devices the aforementioned availability to the
user desirous of communicating, and to effect communication between the user desirous of communicating and a
selected one of the respective users who is indicated as being
available for communication.
5 Claims, 2 Drawing Sheets

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Page 2
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
DKG Campbel, et aI., "Linda for Case Base Retrival: A Case for
Extending the Functionality of Linda and its Abstract Machine, " pp.
226-235, 1998 IEEE Proc. 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences.

Hyong Sop Shim, et ai., "An Example of Using Presence and
Availabilty in an Enterprise for Spontaneous, Multiparty, Multimedia Communications," pp. 1-11, Internet Citation Apr. 3, 2001
XP-002252324.

* cited by examiner

u.s. Patent

Nov. 6,2007

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01
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Sheet 1 of 2

Doris Leafloor

I~

Judy Vterich

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H. Krausbar

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NIck TSIakas

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B. Mcconnell

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En1st Munter
Lee

COX

Janet Bell

Figure 1

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I~

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u.s. Patent

Nov. 6,2007

Sheet 2 of 2

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~
CUPleSpaC~

Figure 2

Device

US 7,292,685 B2
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2

PRO-ACTIVE FEATURES FOR TELEPHONY

information regarding the user's actIvIties. For example,
connnunication with available members of a user-defined
group may be suggested by the system on the basis of a
project or problem the user is working on. Thus, in operation
the user can create a group which lists the people with whom
the user is closely collaborating and with whom the user may
wish to consult on a quick ad hoc basis on issues that arise
out of work in progress. The user either selects a group to
ascertain member availability or the system automatically
selects a group based on the user's current activities (e.g.
location of the user, electronic document the user is working
on, etc.) Rather than consultation with a specific person, the
system invites the user to consult with any available member
of a group who has knowledge of what the user is working
on at a particular time. Preferably, the system creates a
display on the user's telephone or PC of the current availability of members of the group.
Thus, the user is not required to make a series of provisional calls to find someone that he/she can quickly consult
with. Instead, the system pro-actively suggests innnediate
connnunication with available ones ofhislher collaborators.
This improves group activities and so improves enterprise
efficiency. Improved connnunication is thereby facilitated
within the enterprise, which encourages the forms of trust
(competence, integrity and inter-personal) that are needed to
allow people to cooperate in an enterprise. It has been
demonstrated in sociological research that the encouragement of such trust in an organization improves both execution and innovation.
The system according to the present invention also provides services for multiple groups with which the user is
collaborating. As indicated above, the user may either select
a particular group or the system can suggest a group based
on the user's activities, in response to which the display
changes to reflect the availability of members in that group.
This greatly increases the efficiency of the user in a work
enviroument involving multiple contemporaneous projects
with multiple teams. These teams or groups can be created
on an ad-hoc basis since the required information is easy to
enter into the system.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to connnunication systems such as PBXs, and more particularly to a system for
pro-actively suggesting beneficial connnunication to a user
in a connnunication system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Traditional PBX features are 'reactive' in the sense that
they are triggered by user actions and take no action otherwise. Reactive features facilitate communications directed
by a user. A user must take the initiative with all calls under
the reactive feature model. Pro-active features, on the other
hand, take the initiative and suggest connnunications that
may be of benefit to the user.
Pro-active features are known in the art of computer
science but are relatively new to the field of telephony. As
discussed above, the initiation of connnunication has traditionally been left to the initiative of the user. Call-back is the
only telephony feature that comes close to the idea of
pro-active features. With Call-back, a user can ask the
system to notifY him/her when a busy line becomes free, and
create a call between the user's telephone and the newly
freed line. The system generates a special ring to the
originating telephone and sets up the call upon the user
going off-hook. In the context of pro-active features, the
telephony Call-back feature suffers from a number of disadvantages. Firstly, the user is required to actively intervene
in the process (i.e. go off-hook in response to the special
ringing). Secondly, the feature acconnnodates only one user
at a time. Lastly, the feature is temporary in the sense that it
needs to be invoked by the user every time it is used, or after
a daily timer expires (required to prevent confusion by
removing long delayed call backs).
The inventor has recognized the desirability of a system
for allowing a user to establish groups of people that he/she
may wish to have voice collaboration with while working on
a project or problem, pro-actively identifYing a selected
group based on the user's activity, and suggesting connnunication with available members of the group.
Currently 'buddy lists' are used on instant messaging
systems like ICQ andAOL to indicate the availability status
of other users that the user may wish to communicate with.
These systems provide only one list per user and do not
provide the capability of multiple lists or the selection of one
of multiple lists depending on user needs. Thus, it is an
object of an aspect of the present invention to extend the
capability and enhance the usefulness of such "buddy lists"
by providing the capability of selecting between lists either
by direct user selection or by autonomous system action.
Busy lamp fields (BLFs) are also well-known for use in
telephone systems to provide attendants with knowledge of
the current busy/idle status of telephones in the system.
BLFs are expensive and so are reserved for specialized
attendant positions. They also indicate only the busy status
of the users' telephones and not actual availability. Furthermore, BLFs show all users and the display is not in any way
limited to those persons of current interest to a particular
user.

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BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE
PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
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SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
65

According to the present invention, a system is provided
for pro-actively suggesting features to a user based on

A detailed description of the invention is set forth herein
below, with reference to the following drawings, wherein:
FIG. 1 shows an exemplary display for indicating to a user
the availability of members of a group for the purpose of
connnunication; and
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a system for pro-active
feature suggestion, according to the preferred embodiment.

Before discussing the invention is detail, a brief introduction is set forth below of the basic structure and operation of
a tuple space.
A tuple space is a set of type/value ordered pairs called
ingles. Each ingle consists of a type (e.g. Name) and a value
(e.g. John Doe). Thus, a tuple which describes an employee
for a company could, for example, be:
{: name John Doe :age 37 :employee_number 12345 :start_
date 810126 :position Tl2}
The tuple space enables coordination by allowing queries
based on the matching of tuples by anti-tuples. An anti tuple
is a tuple that can be used as a query in the tuple space. In
form, it is identical to a tuple except that the value of any or

US 7,292,685 B2

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4

all fields may be replaced by a '7' which indicates a 'don't
care' condition. Tuple spaces are set up to match tuples with
anti-tuples which agree in all fields except for the one(s)
indicated by the 7 query, which acts as a "wild card". Thus
the anti tuple:
{:name 7 :age 37 :employee_number 7 :start_date 7 :position
TI2}

The tuple used to indicate the user's current availability is
of the form:

would retum the tuples for all employees of position TI2
who are 37 years old.
Operations on the Tuple Space Include:
Poke-place a tuple in the tuple space. Duration may be
specified for how long the tuple should remain in the
space. This may be any period up to indefinite.
Peek---query the tuple space with an anti-tuple. This query
may be specified to last for any period up to indefinite.
Copies of matching tuples are retumed through the interface and the tuples remain in the tuple space.
Pick---query the tuple space with an anti-tuple. This query
may be specified to last for any period up to indefinite.
Copies of matching tuples are retumed through the interface and the tuples are removed from the tuple space.
Cancel-with a specified anti-tuple. All matching anti-tuples
are removed from the tuple space. Tuples themselves may
be removed directly by an appropriate pick request.
Additional operations may be provided such as disclosed
in UK Mitel Patent Application No. Mitel #520 entitled
'Tuple Space Operations for Fine Grained Control'.
FIG. 1 shows a display generated by the system according
to the present invention, which can be implemented as a
window in a PC display or as buttons and LEDs on a
physical telephone. This display indicates the availability of
members of a group that a user may be interested in having
quick consultation with, and provides a button (soft or hard)
by which the user is able to initiate a voice call. The boxes
to the left of each name indicate availability. These boxes
may be implemented in a telephone set using LEDs that are
lit (marked with an 'X') when the user is available, or in a
PC via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Thus, in FIG. 1,
Doris Leafloor is not available at the current moment while
Judy Wierich is.
Turning to FIG. 2, a block diagram is provided of the
functional components of the system according to the
present invention. A plurality of user software agents 1 is
provided representing each user in the system, as is well
known in the art. A plurality of device agents 3 are provided
for controlling operation of various devices 5 (e.g. telephones, PCs, PC phones, etc.) capable of providing communication between users and displaying user availability.
Finally, a tuple space 7 provides communication services to
the devices.
Each of the user agents 1 places a tuple in the tuple space
to indicate the user's current availability (e.g. the user may
directly communicate user availability to hislher agent or the
agent may gather information from the user's current work
status, calendar entries, location, etc.) The method of gathering this information is outside of the scope of the present
invention but would be well understood be a person of
ordinary skill in the art having regard to existing prior art
such as disclosed in Ferguson and Davlouros (Ferguson,
Iunes A. and Davlouros, James D. 1995. PeopleFinder: A
Multimodal Multimedia Communications Tool for Interconnecting Network Users. Also, the Working Notes of the
IJCAI-95 Workshop on Intelligent Multimedia Information
Retrieval, Montreal, PQ, August) describe a system where
user location and activity is surmised from their activity (or
lack thereof) on a computer network.

<Application>
<User_Name>
<Available>

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<pro-active>
<[e-mail]>
<Yes>

{ lUlique user name
{Yes or No

Any user can create multiple groups of other users (referred to herein as 'Pro-active Feature Groups' (PFGs)) with
whom he/she wishes to have periodic ad hoc communication. Each PFG is identified by a Group_Name, ProjecCID
and a list of unique user names. Thus, with reference to the
group shown in FIG. 1, an exemplary PFG format would be:

<Group_Name>< Switch Group>
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<Project_ID>
<User>
<User>
<User>
<User>
<User>
<User>
<User>
<User>

<XOI-704-2X59-262>
<Dorjs

I eafloor@miteJ com>

dudy [e-mail]>
<Helmuth [e-mail]>
<Nick [e-mail]>
<Bryan [e-mail]>
<Ernst [e-mail]>
<Lee [e-mail]>
danet [e-mail]>

Thus, the file consists of a unique name for the group,
<Group_Name>, a field to indicate which project this group
is associated with, <Project_ID> and unique names for the
users whose availability is to be monitored <User>. In
common with standard practice, an Email address format is
used for the unique user name, although other formats may
be used.
Once the user has programmed in various desired groups,
he/she can then communicate with his/her user agent 1 to
indicate which group of the programmed multiple groups
he/she wishes to work with. Alternatively, the user agent 1
can suggest a group to the user based on information derived
from other sources. For example, the user agent 1 may
determine what project a user is working on by noting
hislher physical location, the computer files he/she is using,
information in hislher electronic calendar or by other pertinent information. This information can be used to relate the
user's activities to a group via information contained in the
<ProjecCID> field of the PFG. The user agent 1 uses this
information to determine which group the user wishes to
communicate with.
Once a group has been selected, the user agent 1 initially
determines the current status of each of the members of the
group by peeking anti-tuples into the tuple space 7, where
each anti-tuple is of the form:

<Application>
<User_Name>
<Available>

<pro-active>
<[e-mail]>
<?>

The user agent 1 is then provided with information on
availability of all users whose agents have registered their
availability in the tuple space 7. Any user agent 1 who has
not registered its user's availability is therefore deemed to be
unavailable. The user agent 1 then conveys the user avail-

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ability infonnation to the user in an appropriate fonnat (e.g.
the format of FIG. 1 which includes call buttons for the user
to initiate a call), such as:

a plurality of user agents representing a plurality of users,
each of said user agents stored on respective computerreadable media embodying instructions (i) facilitating
creation, by a user desirous of communicating, of
groups of users to be communicated with, (ii) poking
tuples to said tuple space indicative of each user's
availability for communication; (iii) peeking antituples to said tuple space for eliciting communication
availability of respective ones of said users in said
groups of users to be communicated with and in
response causing associated device agents to display
via respective ones of said devices said availability to
said user desirous of communicating, and to effect
communication between said user desirous of communicating and a selected one of said respective users who
is indicated as being available for communication.
2. The system of claim 1, wherein said associated device
agents cause said respective devices to display a list of said
respective ones of said users, an indicator of availability
associated with each of said respective ones of said users,
and a button associated with each of said respective ones of
said users for initiating communication between said user
desirous of communicating and said selected one of said
respective ones of said users.
3. The system of claim 1, wherein each of said user agents
automatically selects one of said user groups in connection
with which said tuple space as peeked with said anti-tuples
based on information relating to the current activities of the
user desirous of communicating.
4. The system of claim 3, wherein said infonnation is
derived from one or more sources including at least one of
location, computer files in use, project being worked on, and
information in an electronic calendar of the user desirous of
communicating.
5. The system of claim 4, wherein said user agent associates said information with a project name field in said
group.

<Button> <0>
<User> <[e-mail]>
<Available> <No>
10

The associated device agent 3 uses this infonnation to
properly update the user's communication device 5 in order
to display the necessary infonnation and implement call set
up, as shown in FIG. 1. The user agent periodically issues
further anti-tuples to the tuple space 7 for detecting any
changes in availability. Thus, as an example, in the event that
the availability status of Doris Leafloor changes from
unavailable to available (as a result of her user agent 1
poking the tuple space 7 with the following tuple:
<Application><pro-active><UsecName><[e-mail]><Available><Yes», a subsequent antituple will return a value which indicates her availability.
Similarly, as users become unavailable, their user agents
post tuples with the ingle <Available><No>, such that
subsequent anti-tuples from user agents inquiring as to
availability will result in such users being removed from the
display of FIG. 1.
Variations and modifications of the invention are contemplated. All such alternative embodiments are believed to fall
within the sphere and scope of the invention as defined by
the appended claims.
What is claimed is:
1. A system for pro-actively suggesting communication
features to users, comprising:
a tuple space stored on a computer-readable media
embodying instructions for facilitating collaboration
among software agents;
a plurality of device agents stored on respective computer-readable media embodying instructions for controlling operation of associated communication devices
for respective ones of said users; and

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