Patent ID: 8463251

Claim:
A method of managing a communication policy in a voice telephony network having a plurality of subscriber devices comprising the steps of: maintaining, at a policy server, a communication policy for distribution to the subscriber devices, the communication policy containing at least one identifier for causing the subscriber devices to reject voice calls having the at least one identifier; receiving, at the policy server, a notice that a first voice call was rejected by one of the subscriber devices based on the communication policy; the first voice call having an originating identifier; maintaining, at the policy server, a record of calls having the originating identifier rejected based on the communication policy and updating the record of rejections based on the notice; the record of rejections representing the subscriber devices that have rejected a call from the identifier and comprising a device identifier of the one of the subscriber devices, and the originating identifier; after the receiving, receiving a second notice of rejection respective to the originating identifier, after a passage of time from the receiving of the notice of rejection; and updating the communication policy if the record of rejections matches a predefined criteria, the criteria being an extent of time, the updating of the communication policy being performed such that the originating identifier is removed from the communication policy if the passage of time is greater than the extent of time.