Patent ID: 6624827
Filing Date: 2003-09-23
Classification: G06F,H04L,H04N

Abstract:
An apparatus for locking or prohibiting an access to at least one object, comprising:a conference initiator having an electronic whiteboard that initiates an electronic conference, the electronic whiteboard containing at least one object, wherein said conference initiator gives a priority over an access to the object according to a sequence of lock requests; and a plurality of conference participators that participate in the electronic conference, thereby sharing the electronic whiteboard with said conference initiator, wherein one of said conference participators sends a lock request corresponding to the object to said conference initiator in order to obtain priority over the access to the object corresponding to the lock request from said conference initiator or prohibit access to the object performed by said conference participator not having priority, wherein said conference initiator includes: a user interface that interfaces with a user operating said conference initiator to receive a user request from the user; an electronic whiteboard that includes at least one object; an object generator that generates the object on said electronic whiteboard in response to the user request; a packet analyzer that analyzes packets received from said conference participator to determine whether the received packets are a lock request packet, wherein each packet has packet-transmission time information; an object manager that manages information relating to the object and changing the information relating to the object corresponding to a packet if the packet is determined to not be a lock request packet; a command sequence controller that determines whether there is another lock request packet corresponding to the object, said command sequence controller comparing the packet-transmission time information contained in the lock request packet with the packet-transmission time information contained in another lock request packet when there is another lock request packet; and a packet generator that generates a lock command packet to send a lock command packet to all said conference participators, said packet generator generating a lock release command packet to send the lock release command packet to said conference participator, which has sent the lock request packet having an early packet-transmission time information to said conference initiator, to give priority over the access to the object corresponding to the lock request packet or prohibiting the access to the object performed by said conference participator not having the priority.