Prior art — US Patent 8477762

To identify the most relevant prior art for US Patent 8477762, I will examine the patent citations listed within the patent document. The USPTO provides tools for searching patents and their associated prior art.

Here are the prior art references cited in US Patent 8477762:

Patent Citations:

US7408928B2
- Full Citation: US7408928B2 to Bradd, et al.
- Publication Date: August 5, 2008
- Priority Date: December 21, 2001
- Brief Description: This patent describes methods and apparatus for setting up telephony connections between two address domains having overlapping address ranges. The background section of US8477762 explicitly states that Bradd teaches "the call servers also need to be reachable from the media gateways within their respective associated networks."
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): US7408928B2 primarily addresses the problem of conflicting address domains in centralized SIP server environments. Claims 1, 10, and 15 of US8477762 describe a self-forming VoIP network that operates without the requirement of a central SIP server, particularly in isolated clusters. While Bradd's patent deals with centralized SIP servers, it could potentially anticipate aspects of how SIP information is handled or translated between network segments if interpreted broadly as "facilitating communication," but it does not disclose the core inventive concept of a distributed, self-forming SIP registry within each node operating autonomously.
US7443842B2
- Full Citation: US7443842B2 to Takashi Miyamoto
- Publication Date: October 28, 2008
- Priority Date: October 31, 2003
- Brief Description: This patent discusses a central "control apparatus" which facilitates communication between IP devices in two different networks. The description of US8477762 explicitly states, "The instant invention eliminates the need for a central control apparatus, as this prior art patent teaches."
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): US7443842B2 focuses on a central control apparatus, which is diametrically opposed to the decentralized, self-forming nature of US8477762. Therefore, it is unlikely to directly anticipate claims 1, 10, or 15, which emphasize the absence of a central SIP server and the local SIP registry functionality within each node.
US20080063001A1
- Full Citation: US20080063001A1 to Murata Machinery, Ltd.
- Publication Date: March 13, 2008
- Priority Date: September 12, 2006
- Brief Description: This patent application describes a relay server. While the details of the relay server's function would need to be thoroughly reviewed, relay servers generally act as intermediaries for communication.
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): US8477762 distinguishes itself from proxy servers (a type of intermediary service, similar in concept to a relay server) by stating that its nodes act as "full-fledged SIP servers" and do not require a connection to a central server. Therefore, if US20080063001A1's relay server requires a central server or does not implement the distributed SIP registry and autonomous SIP server functionality of US8477762, it would not anticipate claims 1, 10, or 15.
US20080320148A1
- Full Citation: US20080320148A1 to Accenture S.P.A.
- Publication Date: December 25, 2008
- Priority Date: June 22, 2007
- Brief Description: This patent application is titled "Session initiation protocol adaptor." An adaptor typically facilitates communication between different protocols or systems.
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Similar to the previous citations, if US20080320148A1's SIP adaptor relies on or is an intermediary for a central SIP server, it would likely not anticipate the core inventive concept of a self-forming VoIP network with distributed SIP registry functionality within each node, as described in claims 1, 10, and 15 of US8477762.
US20100115107A1
- Full Citation: US20100115107A1 to Fujitsu Limited
- Publication Date: May 6, 2010
- Priority Date: August 29, 2007
- Brief Description: This patent application describes a "Communication device." Without further details on the specific nature of this communication device and its interaction with SIP or VoIP networks, a precise assessment of its relevance is difficult.
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Given the broad title, it is difficult to determine direct anticipation without a deeper analysis of the claims and detailed description of US20100115107A1. However, the publication date of May 6, 2010, is after the filing date of US8477762 (January 12, 2009), making it non-prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102 for the claims of US8477762.

Non-Patent Citations:

Joint Anonymous Authors, "Session Initiation Protocol," Wikipedia.org, Jan. 12, 2009, 1-6, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., San Francisco, California, United States.
- Brief Description: This citation is a Wikipedia article providing a general overview of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The patent itself defines SIP and the SIP registry by referencing this Wikipedia article in its "Definitions" and "Background" sections.
- Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): This reference provides foundational knowledge about SIP as it existed at the time of the patent's filing. It defines SIP as a signaling protocol "widely used for setting up and tearing down multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over the Internet." It also describes the conventional SIP registry as being "located on a centralized server attached to the same network as any VoIP devices." The Wikipedia article explicitly states that if the path to the central SIP server is broken, a VoIP call is not possible with prior art network architectures. This citation serves to establish the conventional understanding of SIP, against which the invention of US8477762 provides an improvement by offering a distributed and self-forming SIP registry in isolated networks. Therefore, it does not anticipate the inventive claims but rather describes the problem that the invention solves.