jst@cca.ucsf.edu (Joe Stong) (08/27/89)
The interface boards that I know of are "The Complete Answering Machine", "Big Mouth" and Watson, for PC busses. Oh yes, and DECtalks, if you're willing to spend many thousands of dollars. There's a board for a 3B1. Any others that anyone knows of? I heard a story out of a fellow at Talking Technology, the producers of "Big Mouth", and I'd like to verify it. I was curious as to why there was always a large cost associated with the programmer's software package (subroutine library) for these boards. He said that there's a company named "VBX Corporation" who own the patent on "Voice Store and Forward". ( As a techie, I would have assumed that "Voice Store and Forward" was a "concept" and thus not patentable.) The fellow described that this company demands significant royalties for the use of their idea, implying that this was the cause of the high cost: You were paying for the incorporation of "voice store and forward" in your own application. He also described that ROLM had paid a large royalty to this company, so they had plenty of money to pursue protection of their patent. Does anyone know about the validity of this story, or was this just an attempt to discourage me from doing a Unix driver for their board on my own? I tried out a Watson once and discovered that it could not recognize the short pulses of touch tone out of the NEC PBX that we had at work, nor would it recognize touch tones transmitted from further than the local CO. My Panasonic answering machine could hear them fine. I returned it. I'd love to hear anyone else's experiences with similar devices and boards. Please copy responses to me via mail, as I don't manage to read this section frequently enough. Joe Stong jst@dorothy.UUCP jst@cca.ucsf.edu pacbell!dorothy!jst
eli@chipcom.com (08/28/89)
Joe Strong writes: >The interface boards that I know of are "The Complete Answering Machine", >"Big Mouth" and Watson, for PC busses. Oh yes, and DECtalks, if you're >willing to spend many thousands of dollars. There's a board for a 3B1. >Any others that anyone knows of? There are at least 20 voice mail vendors out there. for PC-bus products, try Brooktrout, Dialogic, Applied Voice Technology, Centigram. >I heard a story out of a fellow at Talking Technology, the producers >of "Big Mouth", and I'd like to verify it. I was curious as to why >there was always a large cost associated with the programmer's >software package (subroutine library) for these boards. He said that >there's a company named "VBX Corporation" who own the patent on >"Voice Store and Forward". VMX Corporation of Richardson, Texas owns the patent on voice store and forward. I'm unsure of whether the licensing agreements with VMX require that royalties be paid to them even when software toolkits are sold. >( As a techie, I would have assumed that "Voice Store and Forward" was a >"concept" and thus not patentable.) I would agree. apparently nobody wants to fight VMX in court. even ROLM/IBM buckled under to VMX, as Joe mentions. >He also described that ROLM had paid >a large royalty to this company, so they had plenty of money to pursue >protection of their patent. Ihey rake in BIG MONEY from this patent. no doubt. >Does anyone know about the validity of this story, or was this just >an attempt to discourage me from doing a Unix driver for their board >on my own? The story is true. But i can't divulge the details of any of the license agreements that the smaller vendors have with VMX. At least one of the vendors i listed above is working on porting their VSF software and toolkits to UNIX. >I tried out a Watson once and discovered that it could not recognize >the short pulses of touch tone out of the NEC PBX that we had at work, >nor would it recognize touch tones transmitted from further than the >local CO. My Panasonic answering machine could hear them fine. >I returned it. I'd love to hear anyone else's experiences with >?similar devices and boards. Watson is a low end product. Sometimes you get what you pay for. >Please copy responses to me via mail, as I don't manage to read this section >frequently enough. C'mon! TELECOM Digest is one of the more fabulous mailing lists on internet! Keep on reading! [Moderator's Opinion: Thanks for the kind words in your final paragraph. Just my opinion, of course! (wink!) PT]