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System for effecting a telephone call over a computer network

1. a contacts window 202 includes a plurality of contacts entries 204A C Each contact entry 204A C includes a contact address 208A C and a con tact telephone number 210A C Associated with each contact telephone number 210 A C is a software control which when activated causes the telephone number 210A C to be dialed using the third party call control system shown in FIG 1 The software control may take any form For example the soft ware control may be a button or an active area associated with the telephone number 210A C Alternatively the software control may be a hotkey which may operate for example by a user selecting a telephone number and then pressing the hotkey These are merely examples of suitable software con trols any software control with adequate functionality may be used 0036 In order to dial the telephone number 210A C using the third party call control system shown in FIG 1 a URL such as those shown above is used The telephone number 210A C is included in the URL typically as the to number The from number would typically be the phone number of a phone available to the person initiating the call The billto number may be omitted from the URL in which case the from number would typically be billed or a third billto number may be included in the URL 0037 Additional enhancement to this functionality include the capability to scan pages and documents for char acter strings that
2. an indication of the tele phone call to be completed from a first telephonic device to a second telephonic device wherein the call setup information includes an identification of the first tele phonic device and an identification of the second tele phonic device c initiating a call to the first telephonic device or the second telephonic device using a session initiation pro tocol SIP INVITE method and the received call setup information d transferring the call using a SIP REFER method in response to an answer of the call to establish the tele phone call from the first telephonic device to the second telephonic device and the received call setup informa tion and e billing the telephone call to an appropriate account 5 The computer program product of claim 4 wherein billing information is derived from information consisting of a from number a to number and a bill to number 6 The computer program product of claim 5 wherein the bill to number is supplied in the URL
3. password information of the subscriber vcard server 318 decrypts the information and uses it to generate the URL If the transmitted information 316 is a token vcard server 318 validates the token then uses the token to obtain the identi fication and password information of the subscriber such as by using the token to access a database that contains the identification and password information of the subscriber In any case the URL is used to transmit information 320 to secure web server 106 which initiated the telephone call in a manner similar to that shown in FIG 1 0042 Typically vcard 302 includes information such as the network address of vcard server 318 token and or encryp tion information and information identifying the sender of the vcard Alternatively vcard 302 could include a unique token that identifies the particular call setup to be initiated but which does not itself include information that identifies the subscriber account involved Of course various modifica tions are possible such as including the identification infor mation but not the password etc US 2013 0089192 Al 0043 Inthe example shown in FIG 3 vcard 302 included field 312 in which the recipient of the vcard entered the telephone number to which the telephone call was to be completed Alternatively the sender of the vcard or other software object could specify a particular number to which the telephone call is to be completed This would al
4. which number is to be billed for the call the billto number 0030 Although typically user computer system 102 is used to initiate the telephone calls calls may also be initiated from a third party telephone 124 Third party telephone 124 would dial into an interactive voice response IVR system 126 and would be used to enter the information needed to initiate the telephone call IVR 126 would pass the informa tion to CallController 108 using RPC 128 The system would then initiate the call in a manner similar to that for a call initiated from user computer system 102 0031 The third party telephone configuration slightly changes the role of from telephone 118 as compared to the configuration involving only the to and from telephones Both to telephone 122 and from telephone 118 become the to telephones If the third party places a call to from telephone 118 SIP proxy server 114 invokes sip invite meth ods 116 as discussed above However if third party tele phone 124 is trying to reach to telephone 122 the inventive system may have an alternative and additional communica US 2013 0089192 Al tion link 500 adaptively operable in response to invoking methods similar to sip invite methods 116 by Proxy Server 114 0032 As a further possibility CALL CONTROLLER SERVER 108 can always directly call to telephone 122 using the link similar to communication link 500 One of
5. 310 are merely examples and any desired information may be included in the vcard Likewise field 312 and software control 314 are merely examples of a software mechanism that may be used for operation of the vcard 0040 Included in or associated with vcard 302 and or software control 314 is software that initiates a telephone call between the subscriber and the recipient of the vcard When the recipient enters a telephone number in field 312 and activates software control 314 vcard 302 generates a URL and uses the URL to transmit information 316 to a vcard server 318 While the transmitted information 316 may include the identification and password information of the subscriber preferably transmitted information 316 does not include this information in an insecure form For example transmitted information 316 may include the identification and password information of the subscriber in an encrypted form or transmitted information 316 may be a token that is used by vcard server 318 to obtain the identification and password information ofthe subscriber such as by a database lookup 0041 Vcard server 318 receives the transmitted informa tion 316 and generates a URL that is used to transmit infor mation 320 to secure web server 106 This URL is similar to that generated by user computer system 102 shown in FIG 1 which is used to communicate with secure web server 106 If the transmitted information 316 is encrypted identification and
6. US 20130089192A1 as United States a2 Patent Application Publication CITRON et al 10 Pub No US 2013 0089192 A1 43 Pub Date Apr 11 2013 54 71 72 73 21 22 63 SYSTEM FOR EFFECTING A TELEPHONE CALL OVER A COMPUTER NETWORK WITHOUT ALPHANUMERIC KEYPAD OPERATION Applicant VONAGE NETWORK LLC Holmdel NJ US Inventors JEFFREY CITRON BRIELLE NJ US ANDREW WASON ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS NJ US NILESH SHAH MONMOUTH NJ US VONAGE NETWORK LLC Holmdel NJ US Assignee Appl No 13 686 716 Filed Nov 27 2012 Related U S Application Data Continuation of application No 12 494 141 filed on Jun 29 2009 now Pat No 8 320 543 which is a CONTACTS continuation of application No 11 081 174 filed on Mar 16 2005 now abandoned Publication Classification 51 Int CI H04M 11 06 2006 01 52 USCH CDC us apan tunan sa t H04M 11 06 2013 01 USPE e aaa EEE 379 93 17 57 ABSTRACT A system for effecting a telephone call between telephonic devices is operative to use a computer network without manual use of the alphanumeric keypads A third party call control 3PCC application program interface API provides the capability for users to use a web browser or other Internet capable software to place a call rather than using the tele phone keypad A third party call control application program interface includes a uniform resource locator operable ove
7. appear to be telephone numbers These telephone numbers may be highlighted for the user The user may then dial any such telephone number by selecting the number and pressing the hotkey or other software control 0038 Preferably the implementation includes sufficient intelligence to understand the formats of telephone numbers including international telephone numbers as well as the Apr 11 2013 ability to filter the characters in the telephone number to strip characters such as parentheses hyphens etc 0039 In another embodiment subscribers are able to dis tribute software objects that provide the capability for the recipient of the object to call the subscriber Typically the software object is distributed using email but it may be dis tributed by download or any form of electronic communica tions n example of such a software object is shown in FIG 3 In the example shown in FIG 3 the software object is a virtual contact card or vcard 302 In this example vcard 302 includes information such as a company name 304 the subscriber s name 306 the address 308 and instructions for initiating a call 310 In addition vcard 302 includes a field in which the recipient of the vcard is to enter their telephone number 312 and a software control 314 such as a button that initiates the telephone call The information provided the company name 304 the subscriber s name 306 the address 308 and instructions for initiating a call
8. ephone keypad operation OBJECTS AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 0009 Itis therefore a principal object of the present inven tionto provide a system for effecting a telephone call between telephonic devices using a computer network without manual use of the telephonic device keypads 0010 The third party call control APCC application pro gram interface API of the present invention provides the capability for users to use a web browser or other Internet capable software to place a call This eliminates using the telephone keypad The open nature of the API also provides the capability to integrate 3PCC functionality with new or existing applications such as customer relationship manage ment CRM contact management applications and the like 0011 In one embodiment of the present invention a third party call control application program interface includes a first uniform resource locator operable over the Internet to cause a call or connection between a first telephonic device and a second telephonic device to be completed The first Apr 11 2013 uniform resource locator includes identification of the first telephonic device and identification ofthe second telephonic device 0012 In one aspect of the present invention the first uni form resource locator may be generated on a computer sys tem that is communicatively connected to the Internet The call may be completed by initiating a callto the first telephone device and t
9. ers the from telephone 118 to initiate a new call to the to tele phone 122 This call is billed to the appropriate account 0028 There are three possible numbers to which the call may be billed the from number the to number or a third billto number The number to which the call is billed must belong to a subscriber of the telephone service provider Thus if the from number belongs to the subscriber the call is billed to the from number if the to number belongs to the subscriber the call is billed to the to number if neither the from number nor the to number belong to the sub scriber a third number must be billed This third number may be supplied in the URL 104 or it may be associated with the user name that was used to login An example of a suitable URL including a billto number is https secure url com tpec makecall username aw amp password secret amp fromnumber 17325551111 amp tonumber 17325552222 amp billtonumber 17325553333 0029 Preferably an additional HTTPS URL is exposed which allows an application to retrieve a list of phone num bers in a user s account This URL passes authorization cre dentials login information and returns the phone numbers associated with the account corresponding to that login infor mation This list can be presented to the user to select which number is to initiate the call the from number and or to select
10. he appro priate target In addition SIP proxy server 114 monitors any calls that are initiated and completed in order to handle the necessary billing functions 0026 In particular CallController 108 initiates a call from CallController 108 to the from number using the SIP INVITE method SIP proxy server 114 in turn invokes the SIP INVITE method 116 targeting the from telephone 118 The technique used to invoke the SIP INVITE method depends Apr 11 2013 upon the type of from telephone 118 involved For example if the from telephone 118 is an Internet Protocol IP telephone the SIP MVITE method 120B may be invoked directly on the from telephone 118 since the IP telephone is capable of performing the necessary functions in response to the invocation ofthe SIP INVITE method Alternatively if the from telephone 118 is a standard Public Switched Tele phone Network PSTN telephone then the SIP INVITE method is invoked using a PSTN gateway server 120A to initiate the call In either case a call to the from7 telephone 118 is initiated 0027 When the from telephone 118 answers CallCon troller 108 initiates a call transfer to transfer the call to the from telephone 118 from the origin of the call CallCon troller 108 to the to telephone 122 number using the SIP REFER method This terminates the initial call between the CallController and the from telephone 118 and trigg
11. her include a second uniform resource locator operable over the Internet to obtain information identifying an account to be billed The information identifying an account to be billed may also include at least one telephone number At least one of the first uniform resource locator identification of the first telephone device and the first uniform resource locator iden tification of the second telephone device may include at least one telephone number obtained by the second uniform resource locator 0015 Ina still further aspect of the present invention the third party call control application program includes identi fication and password information such information is authenticated and validated before the call is completed BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 0016 FIG 1 is an exemplary block diagram of the system in which the present invention may be implemented 0017 FIG 2 is an exemplary diagram of an implementa tion of a contact list interface to functionality of the present invention and 0018 FIG 3 illustrates an example of a vcard implement ing functionality of the present invention DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 0019 The third party call control PCC application pro gram interface API of the present invention provides the capability for users to use a web browser or other Internet capable software to place a call This eliminates using a keypad such as the alpha numeric keypad on a conve
12. irst call would be completed to the telephone the second call would be initiated the telephone would receive a call waiting indi cation and the second call would be conferenced in to the first For multiple party conferencing the system shown in FIG 1 would be used to initiate multiple calls to a conference bridge with all calls billed to the account of the conference organizer 0046 In addition it is important to note that while the present invention has been described in the context of a fully functioning data processing system those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the processes of the present inven tionarecapable of being distributed in the form ofa computes readable medium of instructions and a variety of forms and that the present invention applies equally regardless of the particular type of signal bearing media actually used to carry out the distribution Examples of computer readable media include recordable type media such as floppy disc a hard disk drive RAM and CD ROM s as well as transmission type media such as digital and analog communications links 0047 Accordingly itis to be understood that the invention is not to be limited by the aforesaid specific illustrated embodiments but by the scope of the appended claims Apr 11 2013 What is claimed is 1 A method of telephone call completion comprising a displaying contact information comprising information relating to a telephone call tha
13. low a subscriber to control the particular calls that can be made For example the subscriber could generate one software object that initiated a call from their grandmother s phone to the subscriber s phone another software object that initiated a call from a friend s phone to the subscriber s phone etc This allows parties to initiate calls to the subscriber from their phone at any time while billing the subscriber the to num ber 0044 In addition the sender of software object may be allowed to specify conditions for use of the software object For example the sender may specify that the software object expires after a particular date the sender may specify time of day restrictions on the calls the sender may restrict interna tional calls and the like If the transmitted information is encrypted this information may be included in the encrypted information If the transmitted information is a token the database may include the appropriate conditional informa tion 0045 Although specific embodiments of the present invention have been described it will be understood by those of skill in the art that there are other embodiments that are equivalent to the described embodiments For example the present invention may also be advantageously applied to three way and or multiple party conferencing For three way conferencing the system shown in FIG 1 would be used to initiate two calls to the same telephone Typically the f
14. mation to a CallController system 108 Preferably the information is passed from secure web server 106 to CallController 108 using a Remote Procedure Call RPC 110 The CallControl ler 108 is a trusted peer of Session Initiation Protocol SIP proxy server 114 0023 SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferenc ing telephony presence events notification and instant mes saging SIP provides the necessary protocol mechanisms so that end systems and proxy servers can provide services such as call completion call forwarding callee and calling num ber delivery personal mobility terminal type negotiation and selection terminal capability negotiation caller and callee authentication blind and supervised call transfer invi tations to multicast conferences 0024 A goal for SIP was to provide a superset ofthe call processing functions and features present in the public switched telephone network PSTN As such features that permit familiar telephone like operations are present dialing a number causing a phone to ring hearing ringback tones or a busy signal Implementation and terminology are different for example SIP refers to a device being in an alerting state rather than a ringing 0025 In response to receiving the RPC 110 from secure web server 106 CallController 108 invokes a number of SIP methods 112 involving SIP proxy server 114 In response SIP proxy server 114 invokes those SIP methods 116 to t
15. ntion 0003 The present invention relates to a system for effect ing a telephone call between telephonic devices The present invention also relates to novel uses of a web browser and Internet capable software 0004 2 Description of the Related Art 0005 Voice over Internet Protocol VoIP is a category of hardware and software that enables the user to use a computer network such as the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls by sending voice data in packets using Inter net Protocol IP rather than by traditional circuit transmis sions of the Public Switch Telephone Network PSTN This eliminates circuit switching and the associated waste of band width Instead packet switching is used wherein IP packets with voice data are sent over the network only when data needs to be sent i e when a party to the call is speaking 0006 The advantages of VoIP over traditional telephony include by way example lower costs per call especially for long distance calls and lower infrastructure costs That is once the IF infrastructure is installed no or little additional telephony infrastructure is required 0007 However despite the technological flexibility of a VoIP system callers are still limited to initiating calls manu ally that is by using the keypad on a telephone 0008 There is an art desired need to greatly reduce or eliminate the user s manual activities in initiating a telephone call including the tel
16. ntional US 2013 0089192 Al telephone The open nature of the API also provides the capability to integrate 3PCC functionality with new or exist ing applications like customer relationship management CRM contact management applications and the like 0020 A system in which the present invention may be implemented is shown in FIG 1 In one embodiment a user computer system 102 is used to access the Internet and invoke the 3PCC API using a secure hyper text transfer protocol HTTPS uniform resource locator URL 104 secure sock ets layer SSL The URL 104 is used to pass authorization credentials such as login information along with at least two phone numbers a from number and a to number An example of a suitable URL is https secure url com tpcc makecall username aw amp password secret amp fromnumber 17325551111 amp tonumber 17325552222 0021 This URL includes specification of the secure hyper text transfer protocol https the Internet address of web server 106 secure url com the action to be performed by web server 106 makecall the authorization credentials username aw amp password secret the telephone number of the telephone from which the call is to originate fromnum ber 17325551111 and the telephone number of the tele phone to which the call is to be completed tonum ber 17325552222 0022 The HTTP URL activates a secure web server 106 which authenticates the user and passes the infor
17. possible scenarios involving such a direct connection may involve a situation when the caller operating the from tele phone does not want experience any delays due to the busy line Instructing the controller server to initiate contact with the to telephone and once the operator of the to tele phone answers the call from the controller server actually connecting the from and to telephones may save the operator of the from telephone time 0033 The configuration of the inventive system involving third party telephone 124 may have numerous practical rami fications and be used in a variety of ways For instance one potential use of this is similar to a calling card The sub scriber could initiate a call from any telephone such as their hotel room telephone or a pay telephone to any other phone while billing the call to their own account 0034 Examples of users of the services provided by the present invention include business users who have a large phone book of users they need to call e g sales calls or by telemarketing operations In this situation the subscriber uses the from telephone and the calls are billed to the from number 0035 For example this could be implemented in phone or address book software such as using a plug in to an email program such as MICROSOFT OUTLOOK or in contact manager software An example of such an implementation is shown in FIG 2 In this example
18. r the Internet to cause a call between a first telephonic device and a second telephonic device to be completed The uniform resource locator includes identification of the first telephonic device and identification of the second telephonic device 202 TELEPHONE NO US 2013 0089192 A1 Apr 11 2013 Sheet 1 of 3 Patent Application Publication gozi ITO diS di dl 3NOHd3l3L OL ecl 3NOHd3131 ANO SLL d3AW3S ARO dIS v 3NOHd3l3L ALHYd QUIHL vel U3AU3S f WALSAS M3TIOH INOO G IE YALAdNOD TIVO Ody 83M 3UN93S GEI 801 SOL GOL Oll I ZIA Patent Application Publication Apr 11 2013 Sheet 2 of 3 US 2013 0089192 A1 TELEPHONE NO Patent Application Publication Apr 11 2013 Sheet 3 of 3 US 2013 0089192 A1 Fig 3 302 310 CALL ME FREE ENTER YOUR PHONE NUMBER 312 CALL ME 314 318 VCARD SERVER 106 _ SECURE WEB SERVER US 2013 0089192 Al SYSTEM FOR EFFECTING A TELEPHONE CALL OVER A COMPUTER NETWORK WITHOUT ALPHANUMERIC KEYPAD OPERATION CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 0001 This application is a continuation of co pending U S Pat No 8 320 543 issued Nov 27 2012 which is a continuation of U S patent application Ser No 11 081 174 filed Mar 16 2005 The aforementioned related patent appli cations are herein incorporated by reference BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 0002 1 Field ofthe Inve
19. ransferring the call so as to complete the call to the second telephone device when the call to the first tele phone device is answered The call may be initiated to the first telephone device using the Session Initiation Protocol INVITE method The call may be transferred to the second telephone device using the Session Initiation Protocol REFER method 0013 In one aspect of the present invention the identifi cation ofthe first telephonic device may include identification of a telephone number of the first telephone device and the identification of the second telephonic device may include a telephone number of the second telephonic device The tele phonic devices may be conventional telephones However the present invention contemplates any present or future tele phonic device The third party call control application pro gram may further include identification of an account to be billed The identification of the first telephonic device includes a telephone number of the first telephone device and the identification of the second telephonic device includes a telephone number of the second telephonic device The iden tification of the account to be billed may include the telephone number of the first telephonic device the telephone number of the second telephonic device or the telephone number of a third telephonic device 0014 In one further aspect of the present invention the third party call control application program may furt
20. t may be completed b receiving a uniform resource locator URL including call setup information having an indication of the tele phone call to be completed from a first telephonic device to a second telephonic device wherein the call setup information includes an identification of the first tele phonic device and an identification of the second tele phonic device c initiating a call to the first telephonic device or the second telephonic device using a session initiation pro tocol SIP INVITE method and the received call setup information d transferring the call using a SIP REFER method and the received call setup information in response to an answer of the call to establish the telephone call from the first telephonic device to the second telephonic device and e billing the telephone call to an appropriate account 2 The method of claim 1 wherein billing information is derived from information consisting of a from number a to number and a bill to number 3 The method of claim 2 wherein the bill to number is supplied in the URL 4 A computer program product having stored thereon instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method of call completion compris ing a displaying contact information comprising information relating to a telephone call that may be completed b receiving a uniform resource locator URL including call setup information having

System for effecting a telephone call over a computer network

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