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CounterPath Awarded New US Patent

counterpath [1]Vancouver’s CounterPath Corporation [1] has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted its patent for presence detection in mobile and fixed broadband networks. By providing applications with a graceful way to automatically select the best network connection based on the user’s location, the patented mechanism enables services such as least-cost routing and minimizes dropped calls by streamlining the process of transferring calls from the cellular macro network to Wi-Fi or a femtocell.

CounterPath’s new patent – No. 7,809,381, “Presence Detection for Cellular and Internet Protocol Telephony” – builds on the company’s portfolio of patents and exclusive license protections for CounterPath’s fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) technologies. These include:

– On Sept. 28, CounterPath was granted a U.S. patent – No. 7,804,821 – for “Circuit Switched Cellular Network to Internet Calling with Internet Antennas,” which enables a single identity to be assigned to
multiple devices and specifies how to route communication services to those devices.

– In 2009, CounterPath was granted U.S. Patent No. 7,502,615 – “Handoff for Cellular and Internet Protocol Telephony” – which enables users to roam between mobile and IP networks seamlessly, allowing active calls to be handed off faster.

The new patent announced today leverages these two patents to enable the delivery of the voice and data services based on the end user’s location. For example, when a person moves from a mobile network into an IP-based network – such as one in a home or office – the combination of these three patented mechanisms allows the home or office phone to automatically assume the user’s mobile identity, or mobile phone ID. When the user leaves the home or office environment, the phone is seamlessly disconnected from the mobile identity and moved back to the mobile network.

“This patent is the latest example of CounterPath’s leadership in providing the IPR and technologies that will enable the kinds of FMC applications and services that the industry has spent the past decade envisioning,” said Michael Doyle, Vice President of Technology for CounterPath. “This new patent further emphasizes how operators and their customers benefit from single-number identity, and it reiterates how we are focused on building the value of our intellectual property around our FMC technology and products.”

With this new patent, CounterPath’s IPR portfolio now includes 24 patents, patent applications and exclusive patent rights, expanding the protection available to service providers, both fixed and mobile, enterprises and OEMs that acquire and develop products and services based on CounterPath solutions.

CounterPath’s solutions for FMC include the Messaging, Network and Enterprise Convergence Gateways and the NomadicPBX. Each provides seamless, converged mobile identity and presence availability on all SIP-based fixed and soft devices enabling a call placed to a mobile number to also ring and be answered on a softphone such as Bria 3 from CounterPath or an IP hardphone. True Find Me/Follow Me, Simultaneous Ringing, desktop SMS and Wi-Fi based calling are all made possible through the enterprise or network’s phone systems.