I, and probably most of you, know next to nothing about Neil F. Sleevi. For his sake, this is a very good thing. Wherever he is now, I hope that he’s happy, healthy, and counting both his money and his lucky stars that this extremely shitty patent he was granted back in 1989 and subsequently sold the rights to never took off, thus preventing him from being one of the most hated motherfuckers on the planet. Nobody wanted advertisements between rings on their phone calls back then, and before anyone gets any ideas, we want them even less now. You have to be a bit of a sociopath to even dream up something like this, I think.
Method and apparatus for applying messages in a telecommunications network
Abstract
In a telecommunications network, a system for applying messages or data to the customer lines of calling parties during the “ringback” period of telephone call set up. The messages are preferably applied between successive ringback tones during the ringback period and are terminated when the called party answers the call. Advertising messages, civic or company announcements, political messages, informational messages(e.g. news or weather), or other data can be transmitted on the telephone lines during what is otherwise essentially unused times when the line is already tied up.