WO2008133578A1

WO2008133578A1 - Method for creating a data base

Info

Publication number: WO2008133578A1
Application number: PCT/SE2008/050114
Authority: WO
Inventors: Johan SUNDSTRÖM
Original assignee: Speedbook Communications Ab
Priority date: 2007-04-27
Filing date: 2008-01-29
Publication date: 2008-11-06
Also published as: EP2153358A1; SE0701027L; EP2153358A4

Abstract

Method for creating an electronically stored contact database based upon a user's (2') subscription with a telephone opera- tor (1b), where said database comprises telephone numbers. The invention is characterised in that, in a first step, historical call information regarding the telephone number of the subscription is received from the telephone operator (1b) and is caused to be stored in a first computer (5), in that, in a second step, the first computer (5) is caused to filter out at least A telephone numbers and/or B telephone numbers from the historical call information, in that, in a third step, the first computer (5) is caused to rank the remaining telephone numbers according to frequency of occurrence and to select the telephone numbers with the highest rank for further treatment, in that, in a fourth step, the first computer (5) is caused to supplement the selected telephone numbers with additional information, associated with these telephone numbers, respectively, by executing a query, comprising the telephone number itself, to an external database (4) comprising information regarding telephone numbers and associated data connected to the subscriber (2) of each respective telephone number, in that, in a fifth step, the first computer (5) is caused to store each selected telephone number, together with the additional information of the telephone number if any, so that the information stored in this manner constitutes an electronically stored contact database.

Description

Method for creating a database

The present invention relates to a method for creating an electronic database comprising telephone numbers. More pre- cisely, the invention relates to a method for creating such a database comprising telephone numbers as well as additional information associated with each respective telephone number.

Various types of mobile communication terminals may allow a user to communicate through many different ways of communication, such as telephony, IP telephony, SMS, MMS, e-mail, reading of internet pages, etc.

One such type of mobile terminals is those being adapted for communication via a subscription with an operator, m which case a subscription and thereby also a user is essentially identified by a telephone number during communication. In the following, such terminals are denoted mobile telephone terminals. The expression "telephony" is intended to comprise not merely traditional telephony, but also other ways of communication m which the user is essentially identified by the use of a telephone number, such as also for example IP telephony, SMS, and MMS.

In such mobile telephone terminals, contact information which is useful for the user is often stored, for example in the form of a database in which each contact is stored as a post comprising information regarding, by way of example, name, telephone number, address, company, etc., but in certain cases also multimedia for example. Many mobile telephone terminals can automatically build such databases during nor^¬ mal use, based for example on information originating in connection with incoming and outgoing calls, sent and received messages, etc.

One problem when using mobile telephone terminals is that the stored information may become unavailable, for example in case the terminal is lost or otherwise fails. In many cases, the user has the possibility to transfer information to another device, such as a personal computer, but often the contact information is only available in the mobile telephone terminal. Therefore, the consequence of the loss of information from the mobile telephone terminal is often final. Of course, this is not desirable.

In other situations, the mobile telephone terminal is not adapted for automatically building a contact database, or has only limited such means, for example if when receiving a call only the telephone number is available, and not the name of the caller, in which case the stored information is incomplete. The user may also not have set the terminal so that it automatically builds a contact database.

Furthermore, it may often be problematic to transfer an existing contact database to a new mobile telephone terminal when changing terminals, which is a common situation because of the fast technical development in the field.

Thus, it would be desirable if a user could gain automatic access to current and relevant information concerning his or her contacts without having to create, structure or refine such information manually.

Moreover, it would be desirable if such contact information could be transferred to a user' s current mobile telephone terminal, so that the information could be used from then on by the user in his or her further communication.

The present invention solves these problems.

Thus, the present invention relates to a method for creating an electronically stored contact database based upon a user' s subscription with a telephone operator, where said database comprises telephone numbers, and is characterised in that, in a first step, historical call information regarding the tele^¬ phone number of the subscription is received from the telephone operator and is caused to be stored in a first computer, in that, in a second step, the first computer is caused to filter out at least A telephone numbers and/or B telephone numbers from the historical call information, in that, in a third step, the first computer is caused to rank the remaining telephone numbers according to frequency of occurrence and to select the telephone numbers with the highest rank for further treatment, in that, in a fourth step, the first computer is caused to supplement the selected telephone numbers with additional information, associated with these telephone numbers, respectively, by executing a query, comprising the telephone number itself, to an external database comprising information regarding telephone numbers and associated data connected to the subscriber of each respec^¬ tive telephone number, in that, in a fifth step, the first computer is caused to store each selected telephone number, together with the additional information of the telephone number if any, so that the information stored in this manner constitutes the electronically stored contact database. In the following, the invention will be described in detail, referring to exemplifying embodiments of the invention and the appended drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a schematic overview of the technical components being exploited by the method of the invention according to a preferred embodiment.

Figure 2 is an overview flowchart, illustrating the method of the invention according to a preferred embodiment.

Figure 3 illustrates the format of the resulting database according to a preferred embodiment of the invention.

Figure 1 shows two operators Ia, Ib, offering communications services. Herein, communications services is intended to mean such services being offered to subscribers 2 with the opera^¬ tor Ia, Ib, where each subscriber 2 has at least one subscription with the operator Ia, Ib, through which subscrip- tion the subscriber 2, when it comes to the offered communications services, essentially is identified by the use of a unique telephone number. By way of example, such communica^¬ tions services may comprise traditional telephony, IP teleph^¬ ony, SMS, MMS, and so on.

In order to benefit from the communications services, a subscriber 2 must have access to a telephone terminal 3. It is realised, and is also illustrated in Figure 1, that one sub^¬ scriber 2 may have a subscription without necessarily having access to a terminal 3, and may have several subscriptions with one or several operators Ia, Ib, or may have more than one terminal 3 for each subscription. Each terminal 3 may be of a stationary type, such as a telephone for home use or for use by a company, or of a mobile type, such as a cellular phone. Mobile telephone terminals are typically used together with a so called SIM card, con- necting the mobile terminal to a certain subscription, and thereby also to a certain unique telephone number.

It is also clear from Figure 1 that different operators Ia, Ib may communicate with one another, for example in order to connect telephone calls or to exchange subscription information, and so on.

Especially, in Figure 1 a subscriber 2' is shown, having a subscription with an operator Ib and a mobile telephone ter- minal 3' .

Furthermore, an external database 4 is shown in Figure 1, which receives and stores information regarding the telephone numbers of various subscribers 2 from one or several opera- tors Ia, Ib. The connection between the operators Ia, Ib and the database 4 is not shown in Figure 1, for reasons of simplicity. Also, the external database 4 receives and stores additional information that is associated with each telephone number, respectively. Such additional information, such as for example the name, address, company name, any other telephone numbers, electronic mail addresses, date of birth, etc., of the subscriber 2, may be received from the operators Ia, Ib and/or from other external sources, such as various public registers. Today, such databases 4 are commercially available.

In Figure 1 is also shown a first computer 5, connected to the operator Ib of the subscriber 2' and also to the external database 4, and a second computer 6, connected to the first computer 5 and to the subscriber 2' . The second computer 6 may also be connected directly to the mobile telephone terminal 3' of the subscriber 2' .

Figure 2 is a flowchart which on an overview level shows the method for creating an electronic database according to the invention .

In step 101, the method is commenced. In this state, the method starts off from the subscriber's 2' subscription with the operator Ib, which subscription, according to the above said, essentially is identified by the unique telephone num^¬ ber of the subscriber 2'. Thereafter, in step 102, for this subscription, historical call information is received from the operator Ib. Such information typically comprises a num^¬ ber of posts, each post comprising information regarding a certain historical event, including a certain telephone num^¬ ber which is external to the subscriber 2' as well as the point in time at which the event took place. By way of example, such posts may comprise information on telephone calls made through the subscriber's 2' subscription, or on tele^¬ phone calls received through the subscription, where each of the posts is associated with a certain external telephone number. Called external telephone numbers, such as in the first example, are commonly denoted B numbers. Received ex^¬ ternal telephone numbers are, analogously and as in the second example, commonly denoted A numbers. Moreover, it is realised that such post types are not limited to these two examples, but may comprise information on for example for^¬ warded telephone calls, sent and received SMS- and MMS mes^¬ sages, respectively, and so on. It is especially realised that external telephone numbers need not be tied to a tele- phone subscription intended for mobile telephony, but may also be tied to stationary telephone subscriptions.

In general, the historical information is available from the operator Ib in the form of a data file, even if other formats may occur.

The information is first stored in the first computer 5. In step 103, the first computer 5 is caused to filter the infor- mation, so that all information except for the external telephone number itself in each post is cleaned out. During this filtration, all external telephone numbers or only a subset, such as for example all B telephone numbers, may be saved.

In case the historical information comprises time stamps, it is preferred, but not necessary, that the first computer 5 is also caused to filter off posts the time stamp of which is older than a certain predetermined point in time, in order to in this way only make use of current information. It is pre- ferred that the first computer 5 is caused to only use posts not being older than about 1 year. According to a preferred embodiment, different predetermined points in time are used for different event types, such as for example to use different predetermined points in time for B numbers and A numbers, respectively, or to use older external telephone numbers that are associated with SMS traffic than when considering external telephone numbers associated with telephone calls. Such decisions will depend on the purpose of the practical application of the invention.

It is also preferred, but not necessary, that the first com^¬ puter 5 comprises a group of telephone numbers, in the form of a list or a set of criteria in terms of area codes, the number of digits in the telephone number or the like, where the first computer 5 in step 103 is caused to always filter out the telephone numbers belonging to the group. For example, such telephone numbers may be telephone numbers that for various reasons may be assumed to be uninteresting to the subscriber 2', such as for example temporary telephone numbers intended for use via SMS in connection with a certain event such as a TV show.

Thereafter, in step 104, the first computer 5 is caused to rank the filtered out telephone numbers remaining after the filtering of the historical information. This ranking is carried out after frequency of occurrence, meaning that numbers that occur a greater number of times in the historical information are ordered with higher rank than numbers occurring fewer times. Based upon this ranking, the first computer 5 is caused to select the highest ranked numbers. Thus, the selected telephone numbers will constitute the most fre^¬ quently occurring external telephone numbers to which tele- phone calls have been initiated by the subscriber 2' and from which calls have been received by the subscriber 2', etc.

Depending on the purpose of the embodiment at hand of the present invention, the details regarding the selection crite- ria may be laid down in different ways. For example, it is possible to select a greater number of called external tele^¬ phone numbers than received ones, and not to include tele^¬ phone numbers from which SMS messages have been received, etc .

In step 105, the first computer 5 is caused to go through the list of external telephone numbers thus obtained, and is caused, for each of the telephone numbers, to request from the external database 4, specified, additional information associated with the telephone number. Of course, the request being sent to the database 4 comprises a statement of the external telephone number itself. The requested information is, according to the above described, associated with the subscriber 2 whose subscription with an operator Ia, Ib is essentially identified by the external telephone number. In case the requested information is available in the database 4 for the specified telephone number, it is associated in the first computer 5 with the external telephone number. It is preferred that the same types of additional information are requested for all of the selected external telephone numbers.

It is also possible to request the additional information from several different external databases. For example, this may be useful in case the requested information is not available in the first external database 4 for the specified telephone number.

According to a preferred embodiment, the additional information requested comprises at least the name of the subscription proprietor 2 whose subscription with an operator Ia, Ib is identified by the external telephone number.

According to another preferred embodiment, the additional information comprises one or several of the fields included in a so called vCard standard, which is an industry standard for the representation of contact information. Of course, which fields from the vCard standard which are requested depends upon the purpose of the application, as well as upon what information is available in the database 4. Since the first computer 5 is caused to request additional information for external telephone numbers, and associate any received such information with the telephone number in question, a refinement of the information originally comprised in the historical call information is achieved. This refining action also accrues during the filtration 103 as well as during the selection 104.

Thereafter, in step 106, the first computer 5 is caused to store every selected external telephone number, together with the additional information that may have been received from the database 4. The total information thus stored, comprising every selected telephone number and its additional information if any, comprises the resulting electronically stored database. The storage may be on a portable, machine readable medium, on a hard disk in the first computer 5, or in another way.

According to a preferred embodiment, the first computer 5 is caused to store the total information in one or several files according to a vCard standard. In other words, the resulting database is stored in a vCard format, permitting reading of the information by many conventional computer programs .

Figure 3 illustrates the format of the database according to a preferred embodiment, in which the vCard format according to version 2.1 is used. In Figure 3, one contact post is illustrated, but it is realised that several contact posts may be stored in a similar manner.

The reference numerals 201 - 206 show the fields making up the contact post. More such fields are available according to the vCard format, but only those of the collectively avail- able fields for which the information is obtained for the contact in question are present in the resulting database according to this preferred embodiment. At 201 and 206, respectively, the start and the end fields are shown, respec- tively, which define the limits for the contact post. At 202, a field defining the version of the vCard format is shown. Therebetween, at 203, 204, and 205, fields storing the information stored about the contact together with declarations regarding what type of information every respective field concerns are shown.

As is illustrated, the telephone number of the contact, originally filtered out from the historical information, is one of these fields, indicated at 204. It is realised that the illustrated fields merely constitute exemplifying such fields. Many other types of fields are thinkable, and more than one field with the same information type may also be present for the same contact. Except for the start and end fields, and for the version field, only the field containing the original telephone number, indicated at 204 is necessary in this example.

Of course, also other ways of storing that associate and store every filtered out, ranked and selected external tele- phone number, according to what has been described above, together with its received additional information if any, are possible and useful.

As a matter of fact, the refined information constituting the resulting database constitutes an automatically produced contact database. Since it is based upon the telephone num^¬ bers that have occurred in the communication to and from the subscriber 2', it also qualifies as a contact database which is specific for and personal to the subscriber 2'. According to what has been described above, it is created automatically by the refinement of existing historical information, which in general is available with the operator Ib of the sub- scriber 2' .

According to a preferred embodiment, the historical informa^¬ tion originates from the communication from and to the mobile telephone terminal 3' of the subscriber 2' . In other words, the resulting database in the first computer 5 comprises contact information for the contacts that the subscriber 2' has been communicating with recently using his or her mobile communication terminal 3'. Thus, this information is adapted for being transferred to the terminal 3' of the subscriber 2', in case the subscriber 2' wishes to establish a new contact database or in case the existing contact database in the terminal 3' for any reason has disappeared, or to another mobile telephone terminal, etc.

According to a preferred embodiment, the resulting contact database is thus transferred to the mobile telephone terminal 3' of the subscriber 2' .

Thus, when the purpose of the method according to the present invention is to create a contact database for use in a mobile telephone terminal, there are sometimes reasons to adapt the size of the database so that it may be stored in the limited memory of the terminal. Such a limitation may be performed in different ways, and preferably it is either set in advance by the subscriber 2' to be carried out or is automatically selected by the first computer 5 based upon information regarding the model type of the target terminal or similar information which is given beforehand. A first preferred way of achieving such a space limitation is that the number of external telephone numbers selected after the ranking 104 is caused to be limited, so that these tele- phone numbers, together with the additional information if any that is added in the later, refining step 105, do not exceed the predetermined maximum space limitation.

A second preferred way of achieving space limitation is, in a similar manner, to limit the number of selected external telephone numbers to the number of free posts in the built-in contact list of the mobile target terminal, alternatively to the total number of available such posts.

Once the electronic database has been achieved in the first computer 5, there are several different preferred ways of making the information available or of transferring it. According to a first preferred way, the transfer of information is executed by causing the operator Ib of the subscriber 2' to transfer the information, electronically and wirelessly, via the existing mobile telephony system of the operator Ib, directly to the mobile telephone terminal 3' of the sub^¬ scriber 2' .

According to another preferred such way, the resulting data^¬ base is caused to be transferred to a second computer 6, from which the subscriber 2' is given access to the stored information via a network to which the second computer 6 is connected. Examples of such networks are IP based networks, such as the Internet or isolated intranets, or the existing mobile telephony system of the operator Ib. In case the information is made available to the subscriber 2' via the Internet, for example through a web page, the subscriber 2' him- or herself may be furnished with an opportunity of sorting, filtering, refining and/or editing the database before it is transferred to a mobile telephone ter^¬ minal or is used in another way.

In case the information is made available to the subscriber 2' via the existing mobile telephony system of the operator Ib, selective access may for example be granted to the data^¬ base from the mobile telephone terminal 3' at later occasions. Thus, the operator Ib may for example present the subscriber 2' with an opportunity to download the whole con^¬ tact database to the mobile telephone terminal 3', or indi- vidual pieces of contact information as a reply to a reguest from the mobile telephone terminal 3' of the subscriber 2'.

However, it is realised that other forms of transfer of the information in the resulting contact database and/or making it available are also conceivable, depending on the purpose of the practical application of the present invention.

Thus, the present invention achieves a method by the help of which a database containing information regarding the con- tacts of a certain subscriber is automatically created, without the subscriber him- or herself manually having to create, structure or refine information. The created information is relevant, since it is based upon the subscriber's earlier communications. Moreover, it is up to date, since the commu- nications being exploited are those that have taken place during a certain historical time up until the day for the creation of the information. Also, the method according to the present invention achieves that such contact information may be transferred to the mobile telephone terminal of a subscriber in order to thereafter be used by the subscriber in his or her further communication.

Above, preferred embodiments have been described. However, it will be evident to the person skilled in the art that many modifications may be made to the described embodiments with^¬ out departing from the inventive idea. Thus, the invention shall not be limited by the described embodiments, but rather be variable within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

C L A I M S

1. Method for creating an electronically stored contact database based upon a user's (2') subscription with a tele- phone operator (Ib), where said database comprises telephone numbers , c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that , in a first step

(102), historical call information regarding the telephone number of the subscription is received from the telephone operator (Ib) and is caused to be stored in a first computer (5) , in that, in a second step (103) , the first computer (5) is caused to filter out at least A telephone numbers and/or B telephone numbers from the historical call information, in that, in a third step (104), the first computer (5) is caused to rank the remaining telephone numbers according to fre- quency of occurrence and to select the telephone numbers with the highest rank for further treatment, in that, in a fourth step (105), the first computer (5) is caused to supplement the selected telephone numbers with additional information, associated with these telephone numbers, respectively, by executing a query, comprising the telephone number itself, to an external database (4) comprising information regarding telephone numbers and associated data connected to the subscriber (2) of each respective telephone number, in that, in a fifth step (106), the first computer (5) is caused to store each selected telephone number, together with the additional information of the telephone number if any, so that the in^¬ formation stored in this manner constitutes the electronically stored contact database.

2 . Method according to claim 1 , c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that in the first step, the historical call information is caused to be received in the form of a data file that exists with the operator (Ib) .

3. Method according to claim 1 or 2, ch a r a c te r i s e d i n that in the first step (102), the historical call information is caused to comprise timestamp data regard- ing the point in time for a registered communication to or from a respective telephone number, and in that, in the sec^¬ ond step (103), only the telephone numbe, whose timestamps specify a point in time, which is later than a predetermined point in time, are caused to be filtered out.

4. Method according to claim 3, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that in the second step (103), the predetermined point in time is caused to be different for the filtration of A- and B numbers, respectively.

5. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, ch a r a c te r i s e d i n that in the second step (103) , a group of predetermined telephone numbers are caused to be established, after which telephone numbers in the group are always caused to be exempted from the filtration.

6. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, ch a r a c te r i s e d i n that in the fourth step (105) , the additional information is caused to comprise the name of the proprietor (2) of the telephone number's subscription.

7. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, ch a r a c te r i s e d i n that in the fourth step (105) , the additional information is caused to comprise fields in- eluded in a vCard standard.

8. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, ch a r a c te r i s e d i n that in the fifth step (106) , the electronic database is caused to be stored in a vCard format .

9. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, char ac te r i s e d i n that the telephone number of the subscriber's (2') subscription is used by a mobile telephone terminal (3'), and in that the information in the electronically stored contact database is transferred to the mobile telephone terminal (3') or to another mobile telephone terminal, so that a contact database comprising those telephone numbers, together with additional information that the user (2') has communicated with earlier by the use of the mobile terminal (3') thereby is created in the mobile telephone terminal (3' ) or in the other mobile telephone termi- nal.

10. Method according to claim 9, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that in the third step (104), the number of telephone numbers being caused to be selected is adapted so that the size of the contact database does not exceed a predetermined value .

11. Method according to claim 10, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that in the third step (104), the number of telephone numbers being selected is adapted to be the number of memory positions in the mobile telephone terminal that is to be updated with the information existing in the resulting database .

12. Method according to any one of the claims 9 - 11, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that the transfer is executed by the operator (Ib) of the user (2') transferring the information, electronically and wirelessly via the mobile telephony system of the operator (Ib), directly to the mobile telephone termi^¬ nal of the user (2' ) .

13. Method according to any one of the claims 9 - 11, c h a - r a c te r i s e d i n that the electronically stored data^¬ base is stored in a second computer (6), from which the owner

(2') of the mobile telephone terminal (3') may gain access to the stored information via a network to which the second computer (6) is connected.

14. Method according to claim 13, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that the network is constituted by an IP-based computer network, such as for example the Internet.

15. Method according to claim 13, c h a r a c t e r i s e d i n that the network is constituted by the mobile telephony system of the operator (Ib) .