Patent ID: 8458321

Claim:
A method of updating presence information for a plurality of presentities, the method comprising: at a presence server: determining that all or some presentities report duplicative presence information, wherein presence information is defined as a dynamic set of information pertaining to a presentity that includes one or more presence attributes; grouping presentities that report duplicative presence information to define a group of presentities that have the same value for a first presence attribute; receiving, from a first presentity within the group of presentities, an updated value for their first presence attribute; and applying the received value for the first presence attribute of the first presentity to all of the presentities in the group of presentities that report duplicative presence information such that a single update of the attribute from the first presentity within the group of presentities causes the same attribute to be updated to the same value for each presentities within the group of presentities to report duplicative presence information.