TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AWARDED PRESENCE INFORMATION PATENT

The US Patent and Trademark Office has issued patent number 7,426,380 for "Location Derived Presence Information" to TeleCommunication Systems Inc. (TCS). The invention enables presence information to be provided at the same time that location information is being requested of a wireless device. It is designed to reduce network messaging traffic and provide better network reliability by reducing the number of messages required within a mobile operator's network by using a single message to aggregate both presence and location information. Presence information is the status of the wireless user such as "available" or "unavailable" or "busy." Both location and presence services are message intensive within a mobile operator's network. The addition of presence information can enhance social networking applications such as friend or family locator services or location-based IM. Drew Morin, senior VP and CTO at TCS, said, "The combination of location and presence will be an important component as social networking applications such as MySpace and Facebook make the transition from the Internet to mobile applications." -Smarajit Dasgupta