Patent 7493126 was granted and assigned to NEC Corporation on February, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A location system comprises a communication terminal for transmitting a location request specifying a target mobile terminal and a type of location information, and a location network. In response to the location request, the location network produces current location information of the target mobile terminal if the type of location information of the received request specifies current location information and transmits the current location information to the communication terminal and stores the last known location information in a memory as last known location information of the target mobile terminal. If the type of location information specifies last known location information, stored last known location information of the target mobile terminal is copied from the memory and transmitted to the communication terminal if the location request is verified by a privacy check and if the stored information is reusable.