Patent ID: 7403770

Claim:
A telephone apparatus having a mail transmitting function, comprising: a calling unit configured to originate a call to a phone number of a recipient; a response judging unit configured to judge whether a response to the call is returned; and a mail program control unit configured to start up a mail transmission program when the response judging unit judges in the negative; a mail generation unit configured, when the recipient judging subunit judges in the affirmative, to generate an e-mail in accordance with an input from a caller after the mail transmission program is started up; a transmission unit configured to specify an e-mail address of the specific recipient based on a recipient specifying table indicating an association among the specific recipient and a phone number and the e-mail address thereof, and to transmit the generated e-mail to the specified e-mail address, and a message mail storing unit prestoring a predetermined message mail to be transmitted to the specific recipient, wherein the mail program control unit includes a recipient judging subunit configured to judge whether the recipient is a specific recipient, and the mail program control unit starts up the mail transmission program when the response judging unit judges in the negative and the judging subunit judges in the affirmative; wherein the mail program control unit includes a table storing subunit configured to store the recipient specifying table, and the recipient judging subunit judges whether the recipient is the specific recipient based on the recipient specifying table; and wherein the recipient specifying table further includes information indicating whether the mail generation unit should automatically generate the e-mail which is addressed to the specific recipient, the mail program control unit further includes an automatic mail generation judging subunit configured, when the recipient judging subunit judges in the affirmative, to judge whether the mail generation unit should automatically generate the e-mail addressed to the specific recipient based on the information associated with the telephone number of the recipient, and when the automatic mail generation judging subunit judges in the affirmative, the mail generation unit generates the e-mail by reading the message mail from the message mail storing unit after the mail transmission program is started up, and when the automatic mail generation judging subunit judges in the negative, the mail generation unit generates the e-mail in accordance with the input from the caller after the mail transmission program is started up.