US 8458277

Patent Overview — US8458277B2

Title: Method and system for providing universal relay services

Patent number: US8458277B2

Application number: US10/975,971

Filing date: 2004-10-28

Priority date: 2004-01-22

Publication date (grant): 2013-06-04

Inventor(s): Richard G. Moore; Guna D. Gunasekar; Phillip E. Lawson-Shanks; Darryl W. Shaw

Assignee: Current assignee listed as Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc.; original assignee Verizon Business Global LLC.

Legal status: Expired – Fee Related; adjusted expiration 2030-12-06 (status as listed; not a legal conclusion).

Purpose: The patent addresses providing integrated communication services across differing communication systems, each of which may use a different addressing scheme. A user may hold multiple telephone numbers, pager/fax numbers, email and instant-messaging accounts, and web-based communication, each requiring separate accounts. The described approach uses an overlay network with a service provider system supporting an instant messaging (IM) environment and connectors/gateways linking IM sessions across different IM environments.

Plain-language scope: A request is received from a source IM client to establish communication with a subscriber at a destination IM client; the request specifies a screen/user name derived from a primary identifier that uniquely identifies the subscriber within the overlay network. The service provider system accesses the subscriber's profile to retrieve another user name corresponding to a different IM environment, based on the subscriber's presence in that environment. The excerpted method includes receiving the request specifying a first user name derived from the subscriber's unique identifier, and determining the unique identifier from that first user name; the description also mentions possible protocol or spoken-language translation by human and/or automated systems.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8458277](/patent/US8458277)/en

What this excerpt does not establish: The excerpt is partial; it omits the full specification, all claims, the complete abstract, and the drawings/text within the image area. It does not establish claim scope, claim count, or the full details of the described determination steps or dependent features. It also does not establish validity, enforceability, litigation history, or prior-art effect (not researched per instructions). Classifications and the fee-related status are as listed and may be assumptions rather than legal conclusions.