Appeal 2007-0374
Application 09/891,167
A. INVENTION
The invention at issue on appeal delivers messages based on a trend
analysis. Because of the rapid development of computers and
communications, people can be reached many ways. For example, a person
may have one or more cellular telephones, a home telephone connected to
the local public switched telephone network, an office telephone connected
to a private branch exchange, and one or more e-mail accounts accessible via
the Internet, a local area network, or a wide area network. Further, many
people also have voice mail, a satellite telephone, a pager, fax machines, or
wireless application protocol cellular telephones. A problem with having so
many different ways to contact a person is knowing where to begin.
(Specification 1.)
Accordingly, the Appellants' invention comprises modules for
monitoring, trend analysis, and forwarding. For its part, the monitoring
module monitors a user's responses to incoming calls and messages. More
specifically, the module stamps the responses with a time-of-day and day-of-
week and stores these in a database. Once an adequate number of responses
have been stored in the database, the trend analysis module performs a
statistical trend analysis on the responses. The latter module generates a
table indicating the probability of contacting the user via a specific method
for a specific time period and day of the week. Whenever an incoming call
or message arrives thereafter, the forwarding module accesses the trend
analysis table and forwards the incoming call or message via the method
having the highest probability of contacting the user. (Id. 16.)
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