Patent ID: 8199740

Claim:
A method of alerting a group of recipients over a wireless network and providing acknowledged group messaging, each recipient comprising a mobile device capable of transmitting and receiving data, the method comprising the steps of: storing data relating to recipients, groups and group members, in a memory device, the data comprising a device-specific identifying address for each of a plurality of recipients, one or more group-specific addresses corresponding to each of respective groups of recipients, the groups each comprising selected ones of the plurality of recipients, and group membership data comprising the device-specific identifying addresses of the selected recipients corresponding to each of the group-specific addresses; providing the mobile device corresponding to each of the plurality of recipients with at least a subset of the data stored in the memory device, the at least a subset of the data being stored in the mobile device and comprising its corresponding device-specific identifying address and the group-specific address of each group to which that recipient belongs as a group member; wirelessly broadcasting a group message addressed to a selected one of the group addresses, each of the mobile devices being configured to receive the broadcast group message, to analyze a group-specific address provided with the group message, and send a response when the group-specific address in the group message is determined to be for a group to which that mobile device belongs; monitoring for responses to the group message from the group members of the group identified by a group-specific address provided in the group message; and storing acknowledgement data in the memory device for each of the group members, the acknowledgement data comprising a listing of each of the group members and an indication of response for each of the group members, the indication of response comprising at least one of an indication of no response when that group member has not yet responded to the group message, and an indication of response when a response sent by the mobile device of that group member has been received.