EFF Patent Busting - Prior Art Needed for VOIP

JumperCable writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to bust an overly broad patent by a company called Acceris. Acceris claims patents on processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints. These patents cover telephone calls over the Internet. Specifically, the claims describe a system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in part through the Internet or any other 'public computer network'. The calls must also be 'full duplex', meaning that both parties can listen and talk at the same time, like in an ordinary phone call. To bust these overly broad claims, we need 'prior art' — any publication, article, patent or other public writing that describes the same or similar ideas being implemented before September 20, 1995."

Phone patches for radio?

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Specifically, the claims describe a system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in part through the Internet or any other 'public computer network'.

In CB radio, and possibly Amateur (Ham) radio you could have a phone patch device which would interface between the radio transciever and the phone system. With two such gadgets you could bridge a gap in the PSTN. Not really legal with amateur radio as you were not supposed to compete with commercial services.

I am sure that emergency services used phone patches on their VHF radios, though. Some documentation on that might be of some use.

TFA talks about it being full duplex. The impression I have is that this system would have used one frequency and a VOX to switch between transmit and recieve. It is possible there were true full duplex systems though.

Re:

[NfoCipher (161094)]

>In CB radio, and possibly Amateur (Ham)
You've got that reversed.

>Not really legal with amateur radio as you were not supposed to compete with commercial services.
Autopatch [wikipedia.org] has been and still is "legal".

Re:Phone patches for radio?

[Andy_R (114137)]

Not over the internet, or using intetnet protocol, so it's not VOIP.

(note to mods: I know I've posted this 3 times in reply to different people, but I maintain it's not redundant until people actually grok the concept and stop posting/modding up non VOIP references.)

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[Maxwell (13985)]

Who ever said VOIP? The requirement is "over a public computer network". The internet was not the first public computer network. Did CompuServe ever allow voice calls? How about BBS's? Fido?

The patent is overly broad. So we are NOT stuck to "VOIP only" to break it...sheesh!!

JON

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[bigattichouse (527527)]

KA9Q Packet radio was in existance before 1995. It would integrate with normal IP, and was used extensively in Brasil and several remote locations for TCP traffic. I wonder if anyone put a phone into the picture.

Vocaltek?

[rs79 (71822)]

Didn't vocalteck do this?

Re:

[Andy_R (114137)]

Yes, the linked article says the EFF are specifically looking for proof that VocalTec or Net2Phone were doing this before 20th September 1995.

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[JonathanR (852748)]

The company I worked for (Automotive parts manufacturing) between Sept '95 and Jan '97 had a system where interstate (non-local) calls could be routed through their leased data lines. There was a dialling prefix for each endpoint node. The data lines were ordinarily used for warehouse inventory/stock control operations (I think it was a VAX/VMS system, so I'm not sure what networking protocols were used for these data links). This was introduced halfway through my period of employment there, and given t

Here's the oldest reference I got

[mangu (126918)]

The way it was described in the blurb, I guess the oldest implementation is mentioned here. [wikipedia.org]

Maybe they have the answer themselves

[vivaoporto (1064484)]

Maybe EFF already has the answer [eff.org], depending on how long AT&T is routing all phone calls through NSA network. They would even kill two birds with one shot, the subpoena to obligate AT&T to disclose the info could come from the patent suit. It's a win-win! What could possibly go wrong?

Mod parent anything but insightful, it's funny

[vivaoporto (1064484)]

Come on, people don't recognize humor when they see it anymore? Next time I'll be telling that Microsoft has given up zune and will pay people to use it and I will be modded informative. Hmmm, wait!

VOIP Prior Art

[azrider (918631)]

Not sure if it was patented, but in the 70's when I worked for IBM, all office extensions worldwide went through the "tie-line". This was a linkup that used the massive IBM internal global network to make calls, i.e. I call Tokyo from LA and the call never touches the PSTN apparatus. Indeed, it never left the building on anything other than data lines. The phones at the desks were plain old analog WE2500 sets.

Re:VOIP Prior Art

[Andy_R (114137)]

Sorry, if the IBM system never touches PSTN as you describe, then this fails part 4 of the EFF's list of features the prior art needs to have:

From the EFF site: CRITICAL FEATURES OF PRIOR ART NEEDED:

      1. The system must have the ability to connect an audio telephone call from a calling party to a receiving party.
      2. The telephone call must be "full duplex," meaning that both parties must be able to talk and listen at the same time. For example, regular telephone calls usually are full duplex, whereas walkie-talkie conversations in which a person cannot receive transmissions from others while he or she is transmitting generally are not.
      3. An ordinary telephone and telephone line are the only equipment the receiving party needs to have. The receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection to receive the call.
      4. The transmission of the call is routed in part through a "public computer network" and in part through the PSTN. This implies that the transmission must cross at least one gateway between the "public computer network" and the PSTN. The Internet is one example of a "public computer network," but the patent does not define what else would qualify as a "public computer network."

Additional Features:

      1. The caller must only have to dial the destination number and no additional phone numbers

Re:

[Mordaximus (566304)]

It wasn't over 'data lines'. Tie lines connect one PBX directly to another. This can be done privately, but are usually done via a (or many) carriers. The trunks that carried voice were not data trunks. It's not prior art.

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[Anne Thwacks (531696)]

OTOH if you can send voice as data, then sending arbitrary data over the internet is, to use the technical term, "Blindingly obvious" to anyone adequately skilled in the art.

Otherwise, I claim keeping text in a computer file.

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[Andy_R (114137)]

Prior art (which kills your 'text in a computer file' patent) is the easiest way of dealing with these patent trolls. While "it's blindingly obvious" is technically a valid reason to get patents struck down, it's tough to make such historical a value judgement stick in court, dealing with facts is what coursts are best at. Otherwise it either ends up in the old whoever has the most lawyers wins situation, or worse the transcript reads like this:

EFF: "Your Honour, this idea is obvious, you'd have to be a bli

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[kilodelta (843627)]

WRT sending voice as data, the incumbent carriers have been doing it that way for the past thirty years.

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[MoogMan (442253)]

Valid prior art would be some form of H.323 to PSTN gateway (called a H.323 Gatekeeper), or maybe any sort of way to bridge PSTN with IP.

FWIW, Cisco's IOS v11.3 [wikipedia.org] implemented this functionality, which puts it around 1999 [cisco.com]

The PDF to the H.323 standard is at http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T -REC-H.323-200606-I!!PDF-E&type=items [itu.int] but I believe it was finalised in 1996, which puts it a bit too late. I think we'd need to be looking at SS7 Gateways to bust this patent.

Prior art should NOT be the problem.

[mrchaotica (681592)]

This is ridiculous. All this patent covers is bridging between the Internet and POTS networks. It shouldn't need "prior art" to be struck down, it should be struck down merely because it's fucking obvious! I mean, it'd be one thing if it were a patent on one particular clever method of connecting the two networks, but the idea in general should not have been patentable in the first place.

Re:Prior art should NOT be the problem.

[pla (258480)]

All this patent covers is bridging between the Internet and POTS networks. It shouldn't need "prior art" to be struck down, it should be struck down merely because it's fucking obvious!

I don't think it does count as that obvious. If you remember the earliest days of free internet telephony, the biggest limitation (aside from the annoying lag) came from needing both parties to have a computer with an always-on connection (or risk missing calls).

Companies like Vonage exist to make a free service un-free solely because they act as a POTS bridge. Think about that. People will pay for something free (well, "free" presuming you would have intenet access anyway) because that one little "fucking obvious" step counts as such a massive leap forward in functionality.



The USPTO has made some phenomenally bad calls in the past, but I don't know if I can really disagree with this one.

Re:

[jambarama (784670)]

The problem isn't the *obvious* issue. I mean, it wasn't obvious to me in 1995, or most other people I'd wager. The problem is the scope of the patent. No one should be able to patent "processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints." It is way to broad. Acceris should hold a patent on A SINGLE process to implement VoIP. You shouldn't be able to patent an end result, just the specific way you used to get there. Patents like this make clean room reverse en

Re:

[arth1 (260657)]

The problem isn't the *obvious* issue. I mean, it wasn't obvious to me in 1995, or most other people I'd wager.

Back in '94, I was talking over speakfreely to an overseas friend on my Indy when my mother dropped by, and asked what I was doing. I told her, and she thought that would be horribly expensive since I was talking to someone on the other side of the planet. When I told her that it used the internet connection, so I only paid for the internet connection (mind you, a 128 kbps BRI was expensive enoug

Artisoft LANtastic could do this

[scsirob (246572)]

How about this link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1161458,00.as p [pcmag.com]

It describes a voice adapter for Artisoft LANTastic in 1990. I used to operate a LANtastic network but didn't use the voice adapters. However, it seems to fit the 'prior art(isoft)' requirement ;-)

Re:

[gravis777 (123605)]

Interesting, but from the way this product is described, its LAN use only, which means that it does not connect to a public network, and it does not seem to connect at some point to the public phone network, which means it canot be used in this case

Graham Article

[Rob_Warwick (789939)]

I'm not sure if this qualifies, since the article wasn't written until 2005, but Paul Graham mentions in one of this articles that a friend of his wrote some VoIP software in 1994. The article is available online [paulgraham.com].

In 1994 my friend Koling wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be sent over the Internet. We weren't sure at the time whether this was a proper use of the Internet, which was still then a quasi-government entity. What he was doing is now called VoIP, and it is a huge and rapidly growing business.

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[mavenguy (126559)]

But did it involve using the PSTN at both ends? Just computer to computer via is acknowledged by the patent as prior art; the central point of novelty is the use of plain telephone sets at both ends communicating with each respective CO; that is regular duplex telephone traffic routed to a local service that converts both ends to/from a connection over IP to a similar remote service that converts back to an appropriate duplex analog telephone traffic to the remote party's analog telephone.

Re:

[Rob_Warwick (789939)]

I've no idea, past what is quoted above, but I somehow doubt it. Thanks for clearing me up on exactly what they're looking for.

Break Stupid Laws

[essence (812715)]

Not sure if this would work, it would probably just end up in people getting sued bigtime, but what if there was a 'class action' of sorts, where a whole heap, and I mean heap, of people/companies used patented ideas, and basically told the patent office and the patent holders to get fucked. It would take co-ordination, but done on a mass scale, the point could be made, and the patent system reformed.

I have an old Russian book, dated 1986

[WetCat (558132)]

Samoilenko S.I "Seti EVM" (Computer Networks), Moscow, Nauka, 1986

which describes Adaptive Communication (connecting voice phones using packet switching).
This book also referencing
Bellamy J.C. Digital Telephony. John Wiley and Sons, 1982

May be something can be found in that book too?

Electronic Cafe ISDN jams

[mattr (78516)]

Two refs here.

http://ecafe.com/nye96.html [ecafe.com]: Electronic Cafe Telebrations (see the rest of ecafe site). The Electronic Cafe was a pioneer in using ISDN modems with special synching to allow music jams with remotely based musicians, piping video and audio into cafe club spaces.

Also, Google: electronic cafe isdn history
This event happened in May, before the September date specified.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/dance/p9a_earlier_seasons. html [usc.edu]

1994-95 Revisited
Zapped Taps(tm)/Alfred Desio Performed in 4

Re:

[mattr (78516)]

Are you sure it wasn't full duplex?

Both musicians could hear both sides I thought.

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[Cyphertube (62291)]

Public networks are the issue, not the Internet. So, it doesn't f*cking matter. Do you work for Verizon or something? You have posted all over the place with the same stupid argument. Yeah, it doesn't work if it is a PRIVATE network, but if it is a PUBLIC network, then so be it.

Hence, any system that used two phones and then sent the data across a public network, ostensbily in digital format, would work.

phone companies

[TheSHAD0W (258774)]

Haven't phone companies been running phone calls over digital networks for ages? That involves switches that are able to perform the conversion, and run the lines full-duplex. The fact that there are two conversions, analogdigitalanalog, shouldn't matter patent-wise; you're actually still performing both conversions, only one's been moved to a local device.

Only solution

[jmorris42 (1458)]

> Haven't phone companies been running phone calls over digital networks for ages?

Yes they have, and in a sane world that would in itself have ended the discussion at the USPTO. Since the first telco stuff was crude circuit switched equipment a better example would be ATM, which also easily predates the patent. But apparently the USPTO and the courts are still allowing a fresh patent for doing ordinary old things by simply adding "over the Internet" to them. We seriously need a law of one single parag

Simon Hackett's Etherphone?

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

I wonder if Simon Hackett's Etherphone qualifies? He was running voice calls over raw Ethernet packets back in 1992. He wrote up a white paper which was distributed at Interop that year.

Verizon really pulled out all the stops

[kilodelta (843627)]

This one has a certain malodorous streak to it. Somehow I can see Verizon as one of the chief investors in North Central Equity which owns Acceris.

The attacks on VoIP are getting more and more vicious by the day and I'm glad the EFF is stepping into the fray.

Telecom 95 in Genève

[dybdahl (80720)]

I attended the Telecom 95 exhibition in Genève, and I still remember how the news went around, that the finnish telephone backbone would be expanded using IP-capable equipment, to carry both internet traffic and telephone calls. This seemed very logical at that time, for those who knew about TCP/IP. I cannot believe that such huge investments in using the IP protocol for telephone traffic was made, unless the decision makers had seen internet telephony work. This means, that there is prior art somewhere.

I suggest that you look into the PR messages released at the Telecom 95 exhibition, and then do some research on those that cover telephony over TCP/IP.

The obvious prior art is...

[freebase (83667)]

The existing Public Switched Telephone network.

I've not read the patent, but if the claim is really as broad as indicated, it would seem to include the PSTN currently used for 'analog' calls.

The PSTN, by definition a Public Network, is made up of analog access lines connection analog 'terminals' - your phones - to what's known as a Class 5 switch. Class 5 switches are connected together at what's known as a Tandem, providing connectivity between all the users within an area. Access to the long distance network is via a connection to a Class 4 switch, usually at the tandem, but not always. Class 4 switches are interconnected (internetworked??) with other switches, and eventually a sufficient network is formed that allows you to call anyone with a phone.

The Switches (Class 5, Class 4, etc) used in this network are very much computers, and have been for quite some time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5ESS_switch [wikipedia.org].

The analog to digital conversion used to be done in the CO itself, and sometimes still is, but usually it's done at the Digital Loop Carrier (DLC) closest to the customer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_loop_carrier [wikipedia.org].

This network even has its own routing and control protocol, SS7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS7 [wikipedia.org].

Plainly, the only thing really new about VoIP is that it abtracts the physical transport and allows the control plane traffic to be transmitted on the same path as the bearer plane traffic.

CDMA (IS-95) carried voice over IP

[claykarmel (78187)]

I believe IS-95, the first publicly used version of CDMA, which was in public use in 1995, carries voice packets over a TCP/IP network from the phone to the mobile switch. From there, the full duplex phone call terminates on any phone on the PSTN.

The question is whether the Sprint or Verizon IS-95 infrastructure constitutes a 'public network'. I would think so.

Wikipedia includes a lot of detail about IS-95, as do books on CDMA available on Amazon, so presumably Qualcomm does not mind publication of high l

Found one!

[DigitAl56K (805623)]

Please google "1994 gsm over ip"

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-721578/ip- access-and-RigNet-deliver.html [ecnext.com]

M2 PRESSWIRE-24 February 2004-ip.access: ip.access and RigNet deliver GSM Abis over IP via satellite; ip.access and RigNet partner for implementation of GSM-over-IP-over-satellite solution; Successful trial paves way for delivery of GSM services to remote locations(C)1994-2004 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Also looks interesting:
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html [tu-berlin.de]
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/toast-igp.ht ml [tu-berlin.de]

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[Icarus1919 (802533)]

Yes, if wikipedia says it, it's so. Case closed, indeed.

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[synoniem (512936)]

What is the difference between a connection over a X25 network and "the internet"? Especially in the early days of internet X25 networks were used a lot.

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[hughk (248126)]

You made a very good point on X.25. The switch manufacturers used it for intercommunication but the important thing was that it was switches, i.e., you stuffed whatever in the packet, be it data or voice and then you put a destination address on the call and it could be routed through a network whether public or private. X.25 was just one low level protocol that was used to setup a point to point connection over a switched network.

Not necessarily

[Rob the Bold (788862)]

Everyone seems to be missing the fact that this patent is of the type "[existing idea] but on the internet".

Their claim seems to be broader than just "Internet Protocol" -- which is part of what EFF objects to: the breadth of the claim.

From the summary and TFA:

Specifically, the claims describe a system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in part through the Internet or any other 'public computer network'.

Re:

[rs79 (71822)]

"So, the Integrated Services Digital Network would fit that description."

Didja ever have ISDN service? It went like this:

1) Call the phone company and order an ISDN line.

That's not a public computer network. It's all going through the phone company.

Re:

[Rob the Bold (788862)]

Didja ever have ISDN service? It went like this:

1) Call the phone company and order an ISDN line.

That's not a public computer network. It's all going through the phone company.

Okay. What's the procedure for getting Internet service?

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[smallfries (601545)]

No it wouldn't. The internet is a packet-switched network designed for computers. ISDN is a circuit-switched network designed to carry calls. They are very different.

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[marcello_dl (667940)]

So if one alters and renames the tcp/ip stack optimizing it for VoIP traffic can avoid this patent and be granted one because the enhanced tcp/ip stack is not tcp/ip anymore just as tcp/ip is different from the isdn network stack. No change to the network infrastructure level, just one more kernel module for *nixes. Could be worse.

Or one could encapsulate ISDN over tcp/ip.

Patents are a way to make life miserable.

Heinlein

[TheSHAD0W (258774)]

In Robert A. Heinlein's book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a computer is given several digital voice circuits which are connected to the telephone system.

Re:

[hughk (248126)]

I work for a while at a sub of Alcatel in the late eighties in Europe. PBXs were definitely being connected over a LAN (at 10MB/s) and generally sharing traffic with IP and DDCMP. The end-users had either analog telephones or early generation ISDN phones. I know that Nortel were doing similar stuff as were Bosch and Siemens. By the mid nineties, most digital switches chatted using IP.