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|  Infinite Monkey Theorem Blog | |
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| Microsoft Rumored Interest in Acquiring TellMe |
Location: Blogs IMT Blog |
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| By PatentMonkey on 3/13/2007 3:15 AM |
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The rumors were confirmed as Microsoft announced its purchase of TellMe, the "largest and most reliable VoiceXML platform in the world."
While the TellMe mobile platform is novel, they hold a few key patents that will be a prize for Microsoft.
More details...
Here's what Microsoft has bought...
Web-to-phone account linking using a linking code for account identification
US Patent 7089310
Highlight: "When the user accesses the voice service over the phone, her telephone identifying information can be used to identify her profile. When she visits the phone application corresponding to the web site, the cookie--now including linking information--can be passed to the application to identify the appropriate web account."
Analysis: This patent teaches the means by which a person accesses the internet using a mobile phone and uses a cookie to interact with various websites. If Wikipedia's reference is correct, RIM's Blackberry (fully launched in 2001) as well as Apple's iPhone would need to consider how TellMe's claims impact the use of cookies on a phone to surf the internet.
Streaming content over a telephone interface
US Patent 6970915
Highlight: A method for delivering streaming information to a telephone using implicit preferences, where the "[streaming] content can include text based content which is read to the user by a text to speech system (e.g., news reports, stock prices, text content of Internet sites), audio content which can be played to the user (e.g., voicemail messages, music), and streaming audio content (e.g., Internet broadcast radio shows, streaming news reports, and streaming live broadcasts)."
Analysis: This technology has solid potential, but is narrowed to software that "implicitly" retains information from a user during repeated search requests for future streaming media interests. To the extent that Window's Mobile already does this, the acquisition only saves it from another large licensing settlement.
Instant messaging via telephone interfaces
US Patent 6757365
Highlight: "Incoming messages can cause an asynchronous notification in the user's current voice application and the user can (if they desire) switch contexts to hear the IM and respond."
Analysis: While not the starting point covered by NTP covering an "email enabled pager", this invention has an interesting twist of combining text with IM functions using multiple programs on a cell phone.
TellMe USPTO Assigned Patents
TellMe USPTO Assigned Applications |
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