Some Properties of Three-Party Entangled States and Their Application in Quantum Communication

We give a brief overview of work on extending present two-party quantum communication protocols to three-party and multi-party protocols. In particular we discuss the case of three-party protocols and entanglement-assisted transformations between inequivalent classes of three-particle entangled states (GHZ-states and W-states) which are non-interchangeable under local transformations. We furthermore review possible applications of three-party entangled states.