September 6, 1999

PATENTS

Easing Telephone-Line Congestion

By SABRA CHARTRAND

or the last few years, phone companies throughout the country have been busy adding new area codes to metropolitan regions to accommodate the rising demand for new phone numbers. In Seattle, where for decades one area code covered the area, there are now three. Callers in the two new areas must dial 10 digits for every call, and so must people in the city who phone the suburbs. Many of these new area-code calls are now billed as long-distance calls.

It is a cumbersome solution to the threat of running out of phone numbers altogether, as more people demand separate lines for their telephones, faxes and modems. After all, you cannot receive calls if your line is tied up on the Internet.

Now, three Swedish inventors have won a patent for an invention that aims to ease such congestion and perhaps eliminate the need for costly multiple lines. Their invention routes conventional phone calls to a World Wide Web site that then notifies a user of an incoming phone call in much the same way that e-mail systems report that a person has new mail.

The three -- Anders Danne, Goran Bangge and Hans Hall -- have designed a system in which a window pops up on a computer screen to notify a user that a call is coming in over the telephone line, and the window comes with buttons that the user can click on to answer the phone, ignore the call, put the caller on hold, take a message or redirect the call elsewhere.

But first, potential users must subscribe to the system. Then, incoming calls are routed through a phone network where information about the person calling is deciphered from their phone number. That information might include the caller's name, a company name or an address. The network then determines whether the person being called is a paid-up subscriber. If so, software in the system activates a connection with a Web site and sends an alert message to the subscriber's personal computer.

The window would also incorporate caller ID technology to include information about the caller so that anyone using a phone line to surf the Internet could decide whether or not to take the call without first logging off.

The invention won patent number 5,946,381.

Death Is Transitory, but Software Is Eternal

ove over, Ouija board. Making contact with the afterlife has gone digital. Lynn Svevad, an inventor in Holland, Mich., has patented a computer program called "Forever By My Side," and with it, anyone can hold a conversation with dead relatives or friends -- as long as they don't mind that the responses are prerecorded.

Ms. Svevad has written software that lets the living call up images of the deceased, complete with voice and motion, using material that would have been collected while the person was still alive. Details like personality and mannerisms can be added. After that is complete, Ms. Svevad allows the living to choose from three levels of communication with the dead: basic, intermediate and advanced.

Hoping to speak with your late great-grandma? First click on her downloaded image, then say "hi" into the computer microphone. The greeting is digitized, and the computer takes over, "relating said spoken electronic format to an appropriate response by said selected deceased relative or friend," Ms. Svevad explains in her patent.

In other words, the computer picks great-grandma's response and the mannerism that it deems likely of her. Repeat Steps 1 through 4 over and over, and voila, you're talking to the dead.

As a bonus, Ms. Svevad's software can also be programmed to remember special occasions. So even if great-grandma passed away years ago, she can still greet you on your birthday with cheery best wishes.

Ms. Svevad received patent number 5,946,657.

Patents may be viewed on the Web at www.uspto.gov or may be ordered through the mail, by patent number, for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231.