US 2,005,216,421 · Filed 2005-04-28

The Patent That Let Telecom Customers Manage Their Business Online

Before cloud dashboards became normal, a telecom company patented a way to let customers access their business management tools through a secure website instead of clunky desktop software. It's like the missing link between old corporate software and today's web-based apps.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system where a telecom company exposes its internal management tools to customers through secure web servers and integrated web page interfaces. What's protected here is the specific method of bridging legacy enterprise software with Internet-based customer access—particularly the architecture where web servers manage secure sessions, launch management applications, and relay customer commands back to remote enterprise servers.

Why it matters

This patent captures an important transitional moment in business software history: the shift from isolated desktop tools to web-accessible platforms. For a major telecom provider like MCI, this allowed customers to self-manage accounts and services online—reducing support costs and improving customer experience. It represents early thinking about how to modernize enterprise software without scrapping legacy systems entirely.

Real-world use

When you log into your phone company's website to check your bill or manage your service plan, you're using technology descended from this web-based access model.

Original USPTO abstract

The specification discloses a method of doing business over the public Internet, particularly, a method which enables access to legacy management tools used by a telecommunications enterprise in the management of the enterprise business to the enterprise customer, to enable the customer to more effectively manage the business conducted by the customer through the enterprise, this access being provided over the public Internet. This method of doing business is accomplished with one or more secure web servers which manage one or more secure client sessions over the Internet, each web server supporting secure communications with the client workstation; a web page backplane application capable of launching one or more management tool applications used by the enterprise. Each of the management tool applications provide a customer interface integrated within said web page which enables interactive Web/Internet based communications with the web servers; each web server supports communication of messages entered via the integrated customer interface to one or more remote enterprise management tool application servers which interact with the enterprise management tool applications to provide associated management capabilities to the customer.

Patent details

Publication number: US 2,005,216,421
Filing date: 2005-04-28
Grant date: Application — not yet granted
Assignee: Mci. Inc.
Inventor(s): BARRY B. R., CHODORONEK MARK A., DEROSE ERIC, DEVINE CAROL Y., GONZALES MARK N., JAMES ANGELA R., LEVY LYNNE, TUSA MICHAEL
CPC class: H04L63/02

View original record on Google Patents →

Want to file your own patent?

If you're building a web platform that connects customers to backend business systems, our free patent scanner can help you spot similar prior art before you invest in development.

Free patentability scan