Google Talk Targeted In Patent Lawsuit

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?

Comments

Yawn... Nothing here, move along please.

[XorNand]

The two patents in question are not for inventions, but processes relating to using a regular telephone to make long distance calls. The patents focus on the use of a centralized database with pricing information for the purposes of determining the cheapest phone call carrier on the fly.

Are you kidding me? It's called "least cost call routing" and is pretty much a no-brainer. The VoIP service company that I run has six different trunks from four carriers for redundancy reasons. It didn't take long for it to dawn on me that maybe I should take advantage of the different rates to different destinations. One carrier might be cheaper for calls to Italy, while another is cheaper to Japan.

As for prior art, can we cite OSPF? How about using a map to avoid toll roads on a trip? Or choosing from several of those 10-10 long distance services, depending on who's cheaper at the moment? It's all the same process (which is the basis for the claim). Just because the calculation is done with a computer instead of a human brain doesn't make it any different.

Somehow I'm not worried about a legal precedent being set though. Rates Technology Inc. just put a company with a $123 billion market cap in their crosshairs. They might as well be using a slingshot and they know it. This is a blatent effort to extort a settlement out of someone with deep pockets. RTI would never try this crap with my company. I hope that Google viciously spanks them on principle.

Re:Yawn... Nothing here, move along please.

[isdnip]

OSPF? You're not even touching a huge well of prior art that predates OSPF by years! This goes right back to telephone network switches and direct distance dialing. By the late 1970s, most major PBX systems had least-cost routing features, some more sophisticated than that named in the Weinberger "patent". And after Equal Access created 10xxx codes, there were boxes that updated tables to decide which 10xxx was cheapest for any given call. All of this directly wipes out the patent in question. (And yes, I've offered information about this to a high-placed person in Google.)

However, the VoIP service doesn't even seem to infringe upon the patent itself, as if the patent were valid, so the case fails on those grounds too. This looks like a blatant attempt to use a trash patent against a deep-pocketed victim in hopes of getting quick cash, rather than dealing with a lawsuit that might somehow upset investors.

Who does the law protect?

[dada21]

Here is the end game of all patent protection laws -- making the attorneys wealthy. Patents are a government granted monopoly. All government granted monopolies take advantage of their power over time -- and the big winners are the lawyers, of course.

Do you expect another result? Do you expect patents to make people innovate? We've been human for thousands of years, we've innovated for thousands of years. New products hit the market every day that were designed by some mom or some kid in a garage -- they didn't think of patents when they started designing.

The force of the law can not truly protect inventions, which is based on thought. Intellectual property is another word for "we want to control how you think and how you process a thought into an action." It seems criminal to me that I can't take a person's creation, make it better and sell the better version myself. This is how our lives get better -- innovating, modifying, perfecting, debugging. No idea is truly revolutionary, we just take little bits and pieces from what isn't working perfectly, and we find ways to make things better.

We elect lawyers to make laws, and in the end, the laws only protect the lawyers. We have accountants write tax code and in the end, the tax code only protects the accountants. This is what comes from excessive government force.

There are many people here who want patent laws to work -- I commend you for continuing to try to find a way to force other people to be good to one another. I have yet to hear HOW we can make patent protections work. We're humans, we're out for our own interests, and that will never change. Why would I want to give certain elected greedy humans this power?

Re:Who does the law protect?

[angaram]

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.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[dada21]

The funny thing is, show me more than a handful of inventors who truly made it big from their inventions.

Most inventions are performed by hired staff in the research and development wing. There is nothing preventing companies from creating a "protect our inventions" wing, or figuring out how much the initial product must sell for to recoup the costs before competitors knock it off.

Define "whole brand new, reworked, better system" as I can't think of any, other than canning it entirely and replacing it with nothing.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[Chowderbags]

The majority of countries with high protections for IP have been well off for decades, if not hundreds of years. Do you think that if, say, the Congo instated US patent law in full force, that all the sudden they would become the patent producing capitol of the world? Ain't gonna happen.

Those countries which have time to invent in the first place also happen to have time to dick around with IP laws, and generally they aren't helpful to the little guy if the court case to protect his IP is going to end up costing him more than he'd get from licensing.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that all patents should be eliminated, cause that's no better than the above, but I also think that unless a company is actually producing (or trying to produce) a product with it's patent, they shouldn't get to sue someone. That would at least eliminate patent leeches on some level.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[kryonD]

I'd agree with you here except for one minor little detail, RTI doesn't have a product that needs protecting. It's not like they filed the patent to ensure BigCorp wouldn't steal the idea and beat them to market. They are basically running an electronic protection racket that would make the Mafia proud. I mean seriously, the only thing Google will get from licensing their patent is protection from being sued. RTI doesn't make any money on their idea unless someone else needs to use it. It's straight up, clear cut extortion. I too am waiting to see Google take this one all the way to the Supreme Court.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[bit01]

Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?

Standard, bogus argument from the PTO.

You're confusing correlation with causation. It could equally be that high innovation countries attract a patent mafia wanting to profit off of inventor's work. You have no evidence either way.

It could also be that patent laws and innovations develop independently but at the same time as a consequence of some other factor involving normal social progression. Again, you have no evidence.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

The New New Thing

[MarkEst1973]

IP Holding companies. I think we all know it's ridiculous, but so long as the law supports this kind of business I imagine we can expect to see more of the same.

Let's hope that the big companies calling for patent reform manage to effect some positive change. Microsoft and Oracle in that article, I'm pretty sure IBM has sounded the call, too.

slashvertorial content is off

[Surt]

Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?

And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims. He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

There are many things wrong with the patent system. Patent holding companies are not among them. If you accept patents at all, licensing companies are vital to the success, fairness, and effectiveness of the system.

Re:slashvertorial content is off

[AK Marc]

And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims.

So you are suggesting it is in the natural order of things for an inventor to invent something, patent it, then sell the patent to a company that has no intention of ever producing or using the patent for anything other than extortion? I know of no inventor who would like that idea. Every independent inventor I know would rather have no patent system than invent something and sell the rights to someone else knowing it would never be produced. Inventors are like artists. They don't do it because they want to, they do it because they have to. If you gave an artist the choice of putting up one of their best paintings in the Louvre or selling it to a private collector to be in storage forever, I think more would choose to get no income from giving it to the Louvre. The recognition and use of the art/invention is more important and greater incentive to create more than pure profit. Profit might motivate corporations to hire more people for the R&D department, but it doesn't seem to be the motivation for the independent artists and inventors I know.

If you are just talking about an inventor defending his patent, there are plenty of laywers out there willing to take the case, and they won't demand rights to the patent to do so. That is the recourse that inventors use, rather than just selling off their patents.

He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

What profits? They would be selling to a company guaranteed to not produce it. You'd have to be pretty stupid to make a deal based on profits when selling something to a company you know won't produce anything.

The Patent Claims

[putko]

FTFA:

"The two patents in question are not for inventions, but processes relating to using a regular telephone to make long distance calls. The patents focus on the use of a centralized database with pricing information for the purposes of determining the cheapest phone call carrier on the fly. The patents do not deal explicitly with the Internet, however, and do not even appear to have VoIP ventures in mind. (I thank my lucky stars every day that I'm not a patent lawyer, however, so my initial reading of the complaint could be incorrect.)"

In this case, Google may not be the best company to use. If the claims cover routing, then that is handled by a thing called the "internet", which uses some clever algorithms to dynamically route "packets" at the "lowest cost" (in a small-scale fashion). This "internet" doens't use a centralized database for this though, as their claim mentions.

Oh, yes...

[SharpFang]

Google should agree to pay 1000x loss of profit compensation. If they didn't make their Google Talk service, the company would earn about $0 on the patents....

Re:Taste of their own medicine

[boinger]

Have they sued anyone over it?

There are plenty of people/companies with "defensive patents" simply to prevent a jackass from claiming it as their own.

Remember that Mercedes-Benz commercial re: airbags? "We've never enforced that patent." Like that.

Patent lawyers are parasites

[pair-a-noyd]

This one is no different.
These people are too lazy and too immoral to earn an HONEST living so they leach off of the hard work of others. They are thieves and scum. Whale shit is a higher life form than these filthy parasites.

While I'm no fan of Google or it's mega-corporate adventures, I'm less of a fan of parasitical lawyers. Patent lawyers are bottom feeders and this guy is just one of many.

Patent lawyers should be classified as enemy combatants and hustled off to Gitmo in the middle of the night.

defensive patenting

[jilles]

It's stuff like this that makes the big software corporations invest in patents. Companies like google and microsoft don't draw significant revenue from patents and actually invest heavily in research. But having patents guarantees that they won't end up sueing each other. It's a defensive thing and it has gotten way out of hand. I work for a large european company that files lots of patents (Nokia) and we are very much into this thing. European patent law doesn't allow many of the patents we file in the US. Just recently we got sued by this small company from the US. Filing patents is our primary defence against this. Our money comes from selling phones, not intelectual property licensing.

With the US patent law and office deliberately (this was/is lobbied for) weakened to the point where basically any brain fart may be patent pending, people are patenting everything they can think of with absolute disrespect to such outdated things as prior art, originality or even cleverness. It doesn't matter if an idea is stupid, based on existing ideas and stolen: a patent gives you the right to sue. The legal process is guaranteed to be lengthy, complicated and above all very expensive. The patent office rubberstamping anything they stumble upon ensures a steady stream of revenue for a growing group of companies who, in all honestly, have never lifted a finger to do anything remotely resembling research. Their revenues are based on bullshit portfolios of patents. Google is just the latest victim. Luckily they have the muscle to fight back. Many truely innovative companies don't.

The rats of the IPR industry are becoming an obstacle for innovation. Large corporations are now starting to feel this pain (e.g. Google, IBM, Nokia and Microsoft have all recently had to deal with lawsuits from insignificant IPR only corporations). The problem with IPR only companies is that you can't countersue. In other words, your patent portfolio is worthless if you are sued by one of those companies. It is my hope that these companies will get smart and start lobbying against software patents instead of in favour like they have done in the past. Just today I joked to a colleague that Nokia should quit selling phones and focus on the Nokia Research Center I work for :-).

Seems like a difficult case for them...

[linuxtelephony]

Ignoring the sheer size of Google and their ability to pay for lawyers to defend themselves rathar than settle, the patents themselves are not ideally suited for the attack against Google talk.

There are two patents. The first is 5,425,085 and is clearly for a "device" contained "in a housing" that people plug in their phone and it automatically chooses the cheapest rates to route the calls. Think of this as something that would automatically prefix your calls with a 10-10 code for least cost routing at your house.

The second is 5,519,769 appears to be for a method of updating the routing database of the device in the previous patent. It is also directed towards a device connected to the calling station.

The key to these patents and why standard carrier based least cost routing do not apply, is that the routing decisions appear to be made at the end points and not by the carrier switches themselves.

Now, if you make "device" to mean your computer, and make the "calling station" also mean your computer; make telephone network mean the internet; and, squint your eyes just so - then these could be seen to be relevant to Google Talk.

Re:Seems like a difficult case for them...

[linuxtelephony]

Typical /. disclaimer: IANAL.

The first patent appears to have been filed in 1995, and reexamined and confirmed in 2001 with no updates. The second patent appears to have been filed in 1996, and reexamined and confirmed in 2002 with a few more claims added.

Short of an in depth review of both patents, there are three areas where I think Google will be able to defend. First, the patents are clearly for a dedicated device plugged into the calling station. The device is self-contained, and does all the decision making, ultimately dialing the routing codes for the desired carrier. The patent is for the use of a telephone calling station. And, the patent is for devices that use the telephone network.

While a computer can be argued to equal the "device" in the patent -- how the computer is used for Google Talk does not match how the device makes its decision for routing calls. And, a sound card with headset does not a calling station make. The computer would have to be considered both the device and the calling station for these to hold up. Finally, the internet would have to be considered "the" telephone network.

The language in these patents are targetted specifically, and narrowly, to the application of their end-point call routing device. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from these, or if Google will settle quietly.

Here's hoping Google fights.

Why only Google Talk?

[origamy]

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...

Patent != Invention

[arth1]

Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?

By counting "inventions" of a country with a patent system like the US, you're counting patented inventions, which isn't the same as useful inventions coming out of a system without the same patent protection. And in many cases, what's invented elsewhere is patented in the US -- that doesn't make it a US invention.
By presupposing that the number of patents reflects the number of inventions, and thus can be used as evidence that patents increase invention, you're begging the question. All you're proving is that availability of a patent system will increase the number of patents.

Regards,
--
*Art

I have an idea for that...

[Reziac]

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. ;)

Patent Trolls / Accelerando

[ansible]

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".

I would like to patent...

[AZURERAZOR]

Using a mouse to make an online purchase .... Oops too late Amazon already did it... http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/ amazon_patent.html

Automatically updating security software over the internet ... Sorry McAfee already got that one ... http://www.dotgnu.org/patent-analysis.html

Use of graphics and text to sell products over the internet... Darn too late again (see Pangea Intellectual Properties) http://www.chillingeffects.org/ecom/

Tabbed browsing... You might be thinking Mozilla or Opera... Nope Microsoft http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 406551

Maybe "techniques for cleaning one's anus using rolls of soft paper"... I have not checked but I am sure that one's covered too.