Telecommunications expert witness David Lucantoni, Ph.D., DLT Consulting, writes on the most important items that need to be understood by both attorneys and infringement and validity experts.
1. Architecture for both the structures in the patent and of the accused infringing system – The hardware components need to be understood, ACD, VRU, CTI, etc. Are connections between components direct, through the PSTN, etc.?
2. Call or message flows – What are the specific messages, sequence, source and destination between components to achieve each important transaction under study.
3. What is stored in the various databases – Various data is requested and retrieved from the various databases, customer login and pin (for returning customers), customer account information (address, services subscribed to, etc.), previous customer transactions with system. These typically show up on the operator’s screen as a “screen pop” as the call is routed to an operator.
4. Back-end or off-site systems – Typically various (3rd-party) credit card verification systems.