Patent Law Insights : Software Patent Lawyer & Attorney : Perkins Coie Law Firm : Intellectual Property & Technology Law

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Several recent Twitter tweets pointed to a Justia article announcing that Texas company TechRadium has sued Twitter for patent infringement.  According to TechRadium's web site, that company is in the business of providing "mass notification and emergency alerting systems to a vast array of governmental, educational, commercial and non-profit entities."  According to the complaint Justia published, the relevant patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,130,389, 7,496,183, and 7,519,165.

The '389 patent's first claim is:

1. A digital notification and response system, comprising:

a. an administrator interface for preparing and transmitting a message from an administrator to at least one user contact device;

b. a dynamic information database for storing the message, wherein the dynamic information database comprises;

i. user contact data comprising:

1. user contact device information; and

2. user selected priority information that indicates a contact order for the user contact device;

ii. user selected grouping information comprising:

1. at least one group associated with each user contact device; and

2. a priority order for contacting each user contact device within the group;

iii. response data comprising:

1. user response information that indicates individual user contact devices have received the message; and

2. response information that indicates when insufficient user contact device information exists to contact the user contact devices;

wherein the administrator initiates distribution of the message using the grouping information, priority information, and the priority order, and wherein the message is transmitted through at least two industry standard gateways simultaneously, wherein the two industry standard gateways are selected from the group consisting of: a SMTP gateway a SIP, an H.323, an ISDN gateway, a PSTN gateway, a softswitch, and combinations thereof, wherein the message is received by the at least one user contact device, and the at least one user contact device transmits a response through the industry standard gateways to the dynamic information database.

The '183 patent's first claim is:

1. A method to provide a digital notification and response to groups of users having at least one contact device comprising:

storing in a dynamic information database:

user contact data for at least one group of users, wherein each user in the at least one group of users has at least one user contact device;

user selected priority information that comprises a contact order for each user contact device; and

user selected grouping information comprising at least one group associated with each user contact device;

using an administrator interface to form at least one message;

using an administrator in communication with at least one processor to initiate transmission of the at least one message simultaneously to a first group of user contact devices for all users in the at least one group of users and then simultaneously to a second group of user contact devices for all users in the at least one group of users using the user selected priority information and transmitting the at least one message through at least two industry standard gateways simultaneously; and

using the administrator interface to ensure each user in the at least one group of users is contacted on the first group of user contact devices before the second group of user contact devices using the user selected priority information.

The '165 patent's first claim is:

1. A method to provide a digital notification and response to groups of users having at least one contact device comprising:

storing in a dynamic information database: user contact data for at least one group of users, wherein each user in the at least one group has at least one user contact device information; user selected priority information that comprises a contact order for each user contact device; anduser selected grouping information comprising at least one group associated with each user contact device;

using an administrator interface to form at least one message;

using an administrator in communication with a processor to initiate transmission of the at least one message simultaneously to a first group of user contact devices for all users in the at least one group of users and then simultaneously to a second group of user contact devices for all users in the at least one group of users using the user selected priority information and transmitting the at least one message through at least two industry standard gateways simultaneously;

using the administrator interface to ensure each user in the at least one group of users is contacted on the first group of user contact devices before the second group of user contact devices using the user selected priority information; and

receiving responses from the user contact devices through the at least two industry standard gateways simultaneously by the administrator interface and storing the responses in the dynamic information database, wherein the responses indicate the user contact devices that have received the at least one message and the responses indicate when insufficient user contact device information exists to contact the user contact devices.