Subject: technical question

From: "Chawla, Jay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 11:13:57 -0500

I hope you can help me find an example of technology that 'anticipates' a
1996 patent that is being used to stop people from implementing
technology that in my opinion should be in the public domain.

I'm trying to invalidate a patent that has a 'claim' that claims:

o a central group message server (GMS)
o a set of hosts connected to that server
o an ability to form groups among those hosts
o an ability for a host to send a packet specifying a group name to the GMS,

   which is then forwarded by the GMS to the members of the specified group
via 
   separate *unicast*, not multicast
o (and this is essential) an ability for the GMS to aggregate a bunch of
messages
   addressed to a group and send them out in a single packet.

For aggregation purposes, simple concatenation would suffice as would
'mixing'
a set of audio streams for an internet voice conference call.

This patent was filed in Feb 1996 and later granted by the US patent office.
Could IDMR or anything you folks know about be used to invalidate this
patent?
Preferably, I'm looking for stuff that was done by Feb 1, 1995 (a year
before the
patent's filing date) that contains *all* of the elements specified above.
If the GMS (or whatever analogous entity you can come up with)
also has the ability to manage group lists and add/delete group
members during an active session (not just in a connection setup phase),
that would be helpful against other claims in the patent.

I'm sorry for the intrusion, but I hope you can help take down this patent!

Jay Chawla

p.s. Please reply to my email address (and copy in the group if desired).  I
do not subscribe
to this list.
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