Patent ID: 7065189

Claim:
A voice mail apparatus comprising: a memory to store received digitized voice in a voice mail sent from a sender, and wherein the memory further stores at least one voice response message of a recipient of the voice mail; an identifier to identify a sender number attached to the voice mail that contains the digitized voice, the sender number corresponding to the sender that has sent the digitized voice; an e-mail transmitter to send an e-mail from the recipient to the sender; a table that provides a correspondence between a plurality of e-mail addresses and a plurality of sender numbers, respectively; and a control unit configured to control operation of the voice mail apparatus, wherein the digitized voice is stored at a particular memory address that is assigned to the sender within the memory, based on the identification of the sender number as performed by the identifier, wherein the table is accessed to allow a recipient of the digitized voice to send an e-mail response to the corresponding e-mail address of the sender, wherein the control unit obtains the at least one voice response message of the recipient from the memory, attaches the at least one voice response message to an e-mail to be sent to the corresponding e-mail address of the sender, and provides the e-mail to the e-mail transmitter to be output to the sender, wherein the e-mail is capable of being opened by the sender so that the sender can review the at least one voice response message of the recipient, by the sender opening the e-mail attachment and reviewing the at least one voice response message, and wherein the sender number corresponds to a telephone set of the sender.