Bell Labs Receives Its 30,000th Patent

Bell Labs has been granted its 30,000th U.S. patent since 1925. Bell Labs was granted nearly 700 patents last year, an average of two patents each work day. The latest patent covers mechanisms for guaranteeing QoS in IP networks. Specifically, this is achieved by establishing a virtual channel in which information flows uninterrupted between a sender and receiver. The mechanism uses a connection resource manager (CRM) application to check whether there are enough spare resources in the virtual channel to accommodate a new request, such as for a voice call. If there are, then the new connection is allowed and uninterrupted communication with limited loss and delay is guaranteed. If the path does not have enough spare resources, the new request is denied, thus preventing the new connection from adversely impacting ongoing conversations. Bell Labs said that since filing for this patent in September 1998, its researchers have leveraged the capabilities of Internet standards including RSVP, MPLS and DiffServ to evolve this patented technique.
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