Messaging system scratchpad facility

United States Patent [w]

Taylor

US005926524A [ii] Patent Number: [45] Date of Patent:

5,926,524 Jul. 20,1999

[54] MESSAGING SYSTEM SCRATCHPAD FACILITY

[75] Inventor: Don W. Taylor, Louisville, Colo.

[73] Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, N.J.

[21] Appl. No.: 08/947,988 [22] Filed: Oct. 9, 1997

Related U.S. Application Data

[63] Continuation of application No. 08/583,361, Jan. 5, 1996, abandoned.

[51] Int. CI.6 H04M 1/64; H04M 11/00;

H04M 3/42

[52] U.S. CI 379/88.08; 379/67.1; 379/71;

379/76; 379/88.01; 379/93.01; 379/201

[58] Field of Search 379/67.1, 71, 76,

379/88.01, 88.08, 88.12, 88.16, 88.18, 88.22,

93.01, 201

[56] References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS

4,625,081 11/1986 Lotito et al 379/88

4.757,525 7/1988 Matthews et al 379/89

4,916,726 4/1990 Morley, Jr. et al 379/88

4,985,913 1/1991 Shalom et al 379/76

5.008,835 4/1991 Jackmann et al 364/513.5

5,220,596 6/1993 Patel 379/94

5,283,818 2/1994 Klausner et al 379/67.1

5.283,856 2/1994 Gross et al 395/51

5.367,609 11/1994 Hopper et al 395/2.87

5^448,695 9/1995 Douglas et al 395/155

5,504,805 4/1996 Lee 379/67.1

5.737,393 4/1998 Wolf 379/67

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

AT&T Owner's Manual: Mobile Cellular Telephone 3030, p. 64.

AT&T brochure: The AT&T Intuity TM System Message Manager, 1994, 4 pages.

AT&T brochure: The AT&T IntuityTM AUDIX Voice Messaging System, 1994, 4 pages.

AT&T brochure: Intuity TM Voice Processing Solutions, 1994, 12 pages (including inserts).

H. Newton, If My PC, and 105 Million Others, Were a Phone, Computer Telephony, vol. 3, Issue 8, Aug. 1995, 5 pages.

Primary Examiner—Fan S. Tsang
Assistant Examiner—Allan Hoosain
Attorney, Agent, or Firm—David Volejnicek

[57] ABSTRACT

An improved messaging system (100, 900) enables a message recipient to take notes electronically while retrieving messages, such as by electronically extracting and separately recording a portion of a received message in a scratchpad area (250,1050) of his or her mailbox (111, 911) or by dictating into a telephone (102, 103), typing on a terminal (902, 903) keyboard, or entering on a Touch-Tone telephones' keypad, words and/or numbers, into the scratchpad area, for subsequent use by the message recipient. The messaging system then enables the message recipient either to retrieve the electronic notes from the scratchpad area, or to automatically place a call to a telephone number that is contained in the electronic notes in the scratchpad area. An improved graphical user interface (915) provides the message recipient with easy access to, and control over, this functionality of the messaging system.

21 Claims, 10 Drawing Sheets