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Google Talk Targeted In Patent Lawsuit

Posted by Zonk on from the suing-is-such-a-noble-business dept.

JamesAlfaro wrote to mention an Ars Technica story, which goes into the recent filing of a suit against Google Talk. A Delaware corporation claims that Talk infringes on two of its patents. From the article: "You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services. By all appearances, RTI is a company that was set up to collect licensing fees and pursue settlements related to the company's patent portfolio. Gerald J. Weinberger, president of Rates technology Inc., once said that the company was 'an enterprise based on patent licensing,' and that much of its business depended on the courts." Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?

4 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who does the law protect? by angaram · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree with the front half of your criticism: the system is broken and makes lawyers rich. Yet without some kind of protection, corporations can cut out the middle man and outright steal ideas and take them to market faster or cheaper than the upstart/mom&pop inventor can. Again, I agree that as it is the little folk have little recourse, de facto. I guess all I am saying is that some kind of legal protection system is not only good in principle, but is actually needed; but a whole brand new, reworked, better system.

  2. Why only Google Talk? by origamy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't Google Talk based on Jabber? Why are they only suing Google Talk?
    Don't Yahoo, AIM and MSN, Netmeeting, Skype also allow voice communication as well as dozens other apps out there? Why are they only suing Google Talk?
    Go figure...

  3. I have an idea for that... by Reziac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Occurs to me that one solution to the "buy patents, sue everyone" business model would be to make patents protect only the original inventor, and for non-independent inventors, the company said inventor was working for at the time, and only the FIRST buyer thereafter.

    Under such a system, patents could only be sold ONCE. After that, the idea would fall into the public domain. That way inventors and companies could make a reasonable return on their innovations, but there'd be no incentive to buy up "used" patents, as they'd have no value.

    This might have a further effect in that it would no longer be profitable to buy another company SOLELY to acquire their intellectual property assets, since as of the 2nd sale, they'd no longer have any protected value. This would probably incline the market toward more smallish companies that competed more directly, and a great many more small-scale patent-licensing deals among related companies, which ought to ultimately be all to the good (smaller companies generally being more customer-centric, and less beholden to stockholders).

    And it would cut the lawyers, who had nothing to do with the invention itself, out of the profit chain.

    Oh yeah... I'm gonna patent this as my business model. ;)

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  4. Patent Trolls / Accelerando by ansible · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These patent troll companies remind me a lot of what LLCs and other corporations evolved into in Charles Stross's Accelerando. You can read it for free, but I encourage you to buy a copy.

    It's a very good read. Easily his best work yet. I got quite a kick out of the infovore idea from his "The Atrocity Archives".