Profiles for information acquisition by devices in a wireless network

Abstract

A mobile telephone ( 10 ), an advertiser, broadcasts an advertisement over a wireless short range piconet link to another mobile telephone ( 12 ), a consumer. The advertisement is broadcast with a predetermined set of classification tags and the consumer phone ( 12 ) has a filter set to accept only certain adverts. When an advertisement of interest is received by the consumer phone ( 12 ) it requests further details automatically via the piconet link and the advertiser phone ( 10 ) provides then automatically via the piconet link. When the consumer wishes to reply to the advertisement they contact the advertiser phone ( 10 ), or an advertiser device, via a long range cellular link ( 16 ).

1 . A method of advertising by using an advertiser telecommunications device and a consumer telecommunications device having an advertisement filter with an allowable advertisement characteristics profile, comprising: 
 emitting from the advertiser communications device an advertisement over a short range via a short range wireless transmitter, the advertisement having a characterisation profile associated with it conveying information about the type of advertisements, of goods or services being offered or both;    receiving the short range wireless advertisement at the consumer telecommunications device;    comparing the received advertisement characteristic profile with its filter profile, accepting advertisements which match the advertisement characteristics profile to an acceptable degree, and rejecting advertisements whose characteristics profile does not match to an acceptable degree, the comparing, accepting and rejecting steps being performed by the consumer device;    offering to present to a user the accepted advertisements received by the consumer device; and    replying to an advertisement via the consumer telecommunications device.    
     
     
         2 . A method according to  claim 1  comprising presenting the advertisements to the user via the consumer device, the consumer device comprising a hand-portable electronic device.  
     
     
         3 . A method according to  claim 2  comprising using a mobile telephone or a personal digital assistant as the hand-portable electronic device.  
     
     
         4 . A method according to  claim 1  comprising setting either the advertisement characteristics of the consumer, or of the advertiser device, or both by using a selection of characteristics from a restrictive set of allowable characteristics.  
     
     
         5 . A method according to  claim 1  comprising interacting with an advertisement protocol manager system to set the consumer device advertisement characteristics filter profile, or the advertisement characteristics profile, or both.  
     
     
         6 . A method according to  claim 5  in which the interaction with the advertisement protocol manager is via wireless telecommunications, at least in part.  
     
     
         7 . A method according to  claim 5  comprising interacting with the same protocol manager system to set up the consumer device advertisement characteristics of the advertisement.  
     
     
         8 . (canceled)  
     
     
         9 . A method according to  claim 1  comprising presenting the advertisement to a user via a display screen of the consumer telecommunications device.  
     
     
         10 . A method according to  claim 1  comprising the user of the consumer device manually selecting advertisements for further investigation.  
     
     
         11 - 26 . (canceled)  
     
     
         27 . A method of advertising by using an advertiser telecommunications device and a consumer telecommunications device having an advertisement filter with an allowable advertisement characteristics profile, comprising: 
 emitting from the advertiser telecommunications device an advertisement over a short range via a short range wireless transmitter, the advertisement having a characterization profile associated with it conveying information about the type of advertisements, of goods or services being offered or both;    receiving the short range wireless advertisement at the consumer telecommunications device;    comparing the received advertisement characteristic profile with its filter profile and accepting advertisements which match its advertisement characteristics profile to an acceptable degree and rejecting advertisements whose characteristics profile does not match to an acceptable degree, the comparing, accepting and rejecting steps being performed by the consumer telecommunications device;    offering to present to a user the accepted advertisements received by the consumer device; and    replying to the advertisement via a broker device interposed in the telecommunications link between the advertiser device and the consumer device.    
     
     
         28 . A method according to  claim 27  in which the broker device modifies the message sent by the consumer device to the advertiser device, or modifies any follow-up message sent by the advertiser device, or a proxy or master advertising device, to the consumer device.  
     
     
         29 . A method according to  claim 27 , in which the advertiser device does not include its own telecommunications address in its broadcast advert, but does include the telecommunications address of the broker device.  
     
     
         30 - 59 . (canceled)