Patent ID: 8149741

Claim:
A multimedia conferencing apparatus for managing simultaneous asymmetrical public and/or private conferences wherein a conference takes place between an external transceiver and at least a local transceiver, local transceivers being able to take part to a plurality of conferences simultaneously, the apparatus comprising at least: a communication interface connected to at least a packet data communication network, the communication interface being operable to send and receive multimedia signals to and from the transceivers a conference managing means: for managing data indicating the existing public and/or private conferences and corresponding ones of the transceivers participating to said conferences; for managing, for each transceiver, a state, in the sense of a state of a Finite state machine, indicating whether a transceiver is participating to a private conference or to a public conference, wherein the conference managing unit is operable to determine, for each transceiver, which of the incoming multimedia signals received from other ones of the transceivers are accessible to said transceiver, based on the transceivers state and on the data characterising the existing conferences; and a signal generating means for generating, for each transceiver, at least an outgoing multimedia signal by mixing the incoming multimedia signals accessible to said transceiver.