$360M Patent Suit Over iPhone Voicemail

Stony Stevenson writes "Klausner Technologies said on Monday the company had filed a $360 million suit against Apple and AT&T over voicemail patents that Klausner claims the Apple iPhone infringes. New York-based Klausner said the lawsuit also names Comcast, Cablevision, and eBay's Skype as infringing its patent for 'visual voicemail.' The plaintiff seeks an additional $300 million from the three." Klausner has won on two previous occasions with this patent. The new suit was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, of course.

Comments

Still Obvious

[pembo13]

I know. You're going to say "why didn't you do it" or something similar. But considering we already have email, so called "Visual Voicemail" isn't that big a leap.

Re:Still Obvious

[tritonman]

Yea I agree that it's lame, email pretty much IS visual voicemail. But one thing that gets me is, the company already won suits with this patent, why wouldn't apple have tried to work with them in advance to avoid getting sued?

Re:Still Obvious

[pembo13]

No idea. Not that I feel sorry for Apple or anything, I just think that this so called patent is obvious.

Re:Still Obvious

[mozkill]

Well, there is no such thing as 'visual' voice mail. anyone who speaks english knows that. I would file a new patent called "visual picture mail" and then you would have a real patent in your hands.

Re:Still Obvious

[Dan Ost]

They reached a settlement with Vonage, if I remember correctly. That's not the same as getting a judgment in your favor that states the patent is valid.

Re:Still Obvious

[Penguinisto]

Possibly because they (Apple + AT&T combined) have a better legal team than the last two victims/defendants? Also note that Comcast and eBay (for Skype) are included as defendants. There are at least three really big names in that pile...

Not real sure, but I'm thinking that just because two other companies folded (Vonage, who was already under a ton of legal strain and prolly wanted to get this out of the way quickly, and AOL, who was at that time undergoing serious problems of their own)... why should these guys follow suit?

None of the named defendants look as if they're too awful invested in software patents, and this could be a perfect vehicle to get the appeals process going and eventually invalidate the damned things once and for all. The bits are all there: A patent which is damned obvious (from nearly any SciFi movie made), tons of prior art (AT&T prolly has something similar if not exact in its archives from the old Bell Labs days in the '60s and 70's), and a blatant patent troll who seems to be just begging for a good hard kick upside the head.

Personally, if this gets anywhere, I think it could possibly be the one to destroy the software patent circus for good.

/P

Re:Still Obvious

[zappepcs]

The reasoning used in granting patents by the USPTO needs to have a new basic clause. The not-obvious one is not cutting it for new technology. Why don't we try something like "if it makes too much common sense, do not grant a patent"....

Oh, so you thought of a way to visually represent and access voicemails... hmmm, that makes a lot of fscking sense... nope, sorry, no patent.

Oh, sending emails to a mobile device.. yes, yes, that is indeed novel... but it just makes too much sense. Sorry, denied. Good luck in your future endeavors with the USPTO, thanks for playing.

I see, I see, sir, you want to use voice translation for writing on your computer. Hmmm it was indeed novel when Star Trek did it, but it just makes too much common sense to give you a patent.

Re:Still Obvious

[UbuntuDupe]

But it was done -- see: every spy movie since 1950. [Screen pops up: "007, here is your mission."]

I know, it's a movie, but shouldn't the fact that the idea was entirely contained in a fictional work be proof that someone thought of it before?

Re:Still Obvious

[chad.koehler]

I don't know -- watching the waveforms of some of the voice mail that I get could be entertaining.

Re:Still Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

This -- along with other posters' comments, to be fair -- goes to a common misconception about patents.

They aren't patenting the idea of doing X. The idea of doing X doesn't have to be new or non-obvious. They're patenting a method of doing X, or a device that does X, etc.

Yes, science fiction and spy movies have depicted technologies well in advance of anything "real" that would let you do what your favorite action hero can do. But when they wrote the movie -- get this -- they faked it. They didn't have a method or a device to do it, they just made it look like someone was doing it.

So years later someone comes up with a method or device. Sure, it's obvious that someone would want to do X -- they've been drooling over it in the movies forever, man -- but the question is, was the method or device obvious?

Also note that if someone else comes up with a different method of doing X, that would fall outside the scope of the first patent. This goes to inventors' efforts to make their patent as broad as possible (while still keeping them valid), but the point is, the capability the invention makes possible isn't what's covered by the patent.

Re:Still Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

What likely will happen is that Apple/AT&T/etc. will show that they can get the patent invalidated, and then everyone will settle with a quiet deal.

Re:Still Obvious

[CastrTroy]

Possibly because they thought that such a simple idea couldn't possibly be patented. It's not that much of a novel idea. It probably doesn't deserve a patent. If everybody had to research every measly little feature they developed to find out if it infringed on some patent, then no products would ever get released.

Re:Still Obvious

[UbuntuDupe]

I understand that, but the point is that (based on the descriptions), the patent is so broad as to cover *any* method of doing X, thus being effectively equal to patent on the idea of doing X.

Re:Still Obvious

[devjj]

The greater problem is that the patent system has morphed from being a means to protect intellectual property into a system for fighting competition. "Ideas" should not be patentable, and software should break ground before it's patented, if you buy that software should be patentable at all. This isn't an issue of ATT and/or Apple reverse engineering a software system and then selling the reimplementation. This is a carrier-specific implementation that is similar only in concept. It simply boggles the mind that effectively moving from a linked list to an array can cost you $360M. Here's hoping Apple doesn't cave in yet again, and together with ATT wipes the floor with these trolls.

Re:Still Obvious

[greed]

You just summed up "Why Software Patents Are Bad" in one easy sentence.

The U.S. patent office treats any software method of doing X as identical, so all implementations are infringing on the same patent.

Re:Still Obvious

[heinousjay]

Email is only pretty much visual voicemail if you abstract it to the point of uselessness. Of course, on Slashdot the prevailing standard for obvious seems to be "I understood it after someone else invented it and explained it to me."

Re:Still Obvious

[timbck2]

IIRC, Vonage and AOL technically didn't "settle" the previous lawsuites; they paid Klausner licensing fees for use of the technology.

Re:Still Obvious

[timbck2]

Not that I think this patent isn't lame.

Re:Still Obvious

[GooberToo]

Obvious and the patent holder should be shot at dawn.

And let's not forget every modern office phone with the blinking voice mail light. Or the answering machine that flashes when a message is available. So much for expanding our scientific knowledge. Visual Voicemail my ass.

Re:Still Obvious

[Gr8Apes]

I skimmed over both patents, and they both relate to touch tone dialing and landline operation. I'm not sure how to re-apply that to "wireless" phones that work on digital systems.... The claims themselves are so broad that you would not be able to retrieve any information about your call without stepping on either patent. That would seem to make telephone testing equipment that pre-dates both of these patents by decades enough prior art to invalidate large portions of the patents, so much so, that there's not much left for the actual "patent".

Re:Still Obvious

[Brickwall]

re: prior art

I worked for a distributor of VMX voicemail systems in the early 90's (they were later acquired by Octel). They had a working "visual voicemail" application at the time. You could open up a window on your PC, see a list of all the messages in your voicemail box, including (if the Caller ID was available) the number, the time and date the message was left, message length, whether the caller had flagged it urgent, and for older messages, whether you had returned it (available only on networked systems). If you had opted for our fax-mail system, the system would also show all your incoming fax messages.

So when does this Klausner dude claim to have patented this? TFA didn't say.

Re:Still Obvious

[krazytekn0]

Personally, if this gets anywhere, I think it could possibly be the one to destroy the software patent circus for good. We can only hope.

Seriously, when did the legal departments take over the jobs of sales in this country? (That is, to make profit) If all these companies put half as much into pleasing their customers as they put into protecting their obvious patents we might have a really awesome thing going on.

Re:Still Obvious

[davidsyes]

I worked for a courier company into the early 90's and sometimes was an on-call driver/dispatcher after hours. I had this honkin Motorola cell and pager. When customers ordered an after-hours delivery, I'd go into the voice mail via the phone line in my computer. A graphical box displayed calls and messages. I could pick them. I'd completely forgotten about that and I think I was the one who told my company's president about the software. I can't remember how or where I'd found it, but it worked out for a while.

I hope that is prior art that can be found. I don't have the disks. I WANT to think it might have been part of Killer Windows Utilities for Win 3.x (the big thick book with the tiger on the cover...), but that I cannot remember is frustrating. I DO still have my KWU book somewhere...

Re:Still Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly because they (Apple + AT&T combined) have a better legal team than the last two victims/defendants? Also note that Comcast and eBay (for Skype) are included as defendants. There are at least three really big names in that pile... I'm surprised they're not suing Google over Grand Central. That service rocks.

Again, software patents do nothing but stifle innovation and progress. East Texas needs to be expelled from the Union and considered a terrorist nation.

Re:Still Obvious

[MeNeXT]

It was called Lip Service. It was part of NeXT and it worked through email. It dates prior to 1996. Apple bought it when the purchased OSX/OPENSTEP/NeXT.

Visual voicemail has been around longer that than this patent. Why should Apple settle?

Re:Still Obvious

[beavioso]

Looking at the patent US 5572576, it seems to have priority to May or March of 1992. It could be March 31st if the claims are completely supported by the continuation-in-part, but it definitely is supported to 5/12/92 (i.e. it's a continuation of a case that was filed on that date).

Re:Still Obvious

[ldapboy]

I worked for VMX, just after they were acquired by Octel. I began work there in 1994 and when I started the visual voicemail application was the 'old' thing that was already in the field. So it existed long before the patent filing date. Reading the patent, they just have to be kidding. Everything described was already available well before the filing date.

Re:Still Obvious

[arminw]

......They had a working "visual voicemail" application at the time......

I had a visual voice mail on our SE/30 Mac in 1989. It was called DoveFax+ and it did faxes and voice mail. The callers were listed on the screen and could be randomly listened to. The system could also respond to various touch tones and give the caller specific recorded messages to these. It could also give specified recorded messages based on time, dates and days of the week. Callers could route calls to various voice mail boxes and we could listen to these remotely from any telephone. The system also could send and receive faxes.

So maybe Apple could show that that their computers could do this sort of thing quite a while ago, with the help of a third party interface between the phone and the computer.

Re:Still Obvious

[donaldm]

The patent lists other patents some going back to 1980 (take particular note to US 4,304,968 (1981) and even some of those patents point to the even earlier patents such as US 3,728,486 (1973). Some could argue that the patent US 5572576 is an innovation (debatable) over previous patents but where do you draw the line of "patents built on a patent which in turn is built on a patent .... etc".

Even the Liquid Crystal Display which from the patent is a"means for displaying caller identities associated with said stored voice messages" had it's origins in the early 1970's. As for touch screens which the iPhone uses they actually go back to the 1970's as well. You do have to perform some integration which any competent engineer should be able to do (ie. obviousness) but is that worthy of a patent? Apparently the US patent office thinks that is the case.

Re:Still Obvious

[Just Some Guy]

You could open up a window on your PC, see a list of all the messages in your voicemail box, including (if the Caller ID was available) the number, the time and date the message was left, message length

I bought a copy of substantially the same thing for my Amiga in 1996. Yeah, I'd be interested in hearing when these guys supposedly "invented" the idea.

Re:Still Obvious

[hawk]

I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. For that matter, I'm not a patent lawyer.

That said, the standard for "obviousness" is roughly whether or not it would be obvious to someone with a Bachelor's degree in that field.

No, I'm not going to argue that that standard is applied often enough, but that's the standard that *is supposed to be* applied.

hawk, esq

Re:Still Obvious

[zappepcs]

I agree with you with one minor exception. The degree I would have had in computer science back in 1982 is totally fscking worthless now, in as much as nothing in the current IT field has anything (roughly speaking) to do with the technology and information at that time. Why should a BS degree make any difference. If I remember right, Bill G's is only honorary. So, when someone can explain how a BS has any real meaning in the test of what makes common sense.. well, then I'll agree that the tests for patents are roughly fair.

This is but one example of how the system is not in tune with the current way of things. There are 19 year old C-level execs. There was none of that when the USPTO was put together, and it was not envisioned. The information age has washed away the premises that were used in constructing the patent system. That, IMO, makes it invalid. IANAL, and I approve this message.

Re:Still Obvious

[rishistar]

Well as someone who has this mis-conception it probably boils down to how the patent law has been actually applied. e.g. amazons recently repealed 1-click system was a great example of this:

Amazon is now prepared to salvage what it can. It has narrowed the scope of two of the claims in the patent, including the broadest, in a bid to have the patent restored, albeit in bowdlerised form. Previously, any "single click" action was Amazon's IP. But if accepted, 1-Click would only apply to "Shopping Cart" models in the future..

That is to say, it appeared that it doesn't matter what the technology is behind it, the idea of having 1-click shopping idea is taken. Probably a bad example, as its been rejected now, but the fact that this happened is what made me think the 'mis-conception' is actually the real model for how things operate.

Re:Still Obvious

[palegray.net]

Perhaps Apple, after careful and measured consideration, thought any patent claims on their technology would amount to a handful of bullshit if actually put to a legal test. As other posters have noted, coming to a settlement agreement with a company doesn't mean you actually believe their claim has legal merit, it juts means you believe you'll spend more than the settlement value fighting it in court.

Maybe Apple has a more noble aim, to actually push the issue and get a positive verdict in court. Not that I put that much stock in Apple's moral intentions, given the fact that they're a publicly traded company (no pun intended).

Re:Still Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ideas" should not be patentable, and software should break ground before it's patented,

Do you know anything about patents? Ideas are not patentable. Inventions are patentable.

To be patentable, an invention must be:

- new
- useful
- non-obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art

Unfortunately, the test of non-obviousness is by nature subjective and fuzzy.

It simply boggles the mind that effectively moving from a linked list to an array can cost you $360M. Here's hoping Apple doesn't cave in yet again, and together with ATT wipes the floor with these trolls.

I think moving from a linked list to an array fails the non-obvious test, but I'm not a lawyer. Tell it to the judge, and it will get sorted out eventually.

Re:Still Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring whether or not this is worthy of a patent, or when patents are issued with respect to working code, patents necessarily protect "ideas", not just specific implementations. One of the goals of the patent system is to protect your inventions from this scenario:

1. Bob invents new gadget A
2. Alice see new gadget A and thinks "that's a good idea. I wonder if I could apply the same principals to B, which is in a totally different domain"
3. Alice invents new gadget C, an improvement over B, using ideas she first saw implemented in A.

Her implementation necessarily is different, because B and C are in a different domain than A. And she may not have studied A in-depth to do any sort of reverse-engineering; it may not have been useful anyway if B and A were fundamentally different. But she may still be infringing on patents for A if those patents make claims to some fundamental process that she copied (knowingly or otherwise) to create C.

Many people would see that as a valid application of patent protections, as originally intended, not some gross misapplication that the law never intended to cover. And I can't say I could argue with them, at least not without undermining the concept of patents altogether. Patents are inherently unfair to the second and later person to independently discover/invent something useful. To that end, I can't see any reason why "used ideas from in another domain" should be any more permissible than "used independently discovered/invented " (jokes about adding "on the Internet" to claims not withstanding).

Re:Still Obvious

[supersnail]

I have been working with computers since 1974 and honestly havent come accross anything really new since 1985.

Sure the harware gets smaller and cheaper and memory constaints no longer exist. But a CICS DB2 system from 1985 had was faced with all the same problems of concurreny, shared resources and throughput taht a modern J2EE system faces.
The only difference is that CICS solved most of these problems in a more elegent manner.

Progamming is programming no matter what the language, and, algorithms are timeless; Shell sort was developed in 1959 and is still the most widely implemented sort algorithm. If you computer science course of 1982 has no relevance today then it must have been a piss poor course.

A long history of litigation

[SIGALRM]

A cursory search for "Klausner Technologies" doesn't easily locate their corporate site, but is certainly a long laundry list of all their legal deeds.

Re:A long history of litigation

[Lindsay Lohan]

NO, No, no!!! They are a real company with a REAL WEBSITE.

oh... sorry.

Re:A long history of litigation

[tomzyk]

you bastard!
some of us can't change our browser settings or add plug-ins to stop all of those pop-ups on our computers at work!

er.. um... not that i'm surfing /. here at work... errrr... i mean THERE at work... i'm at home now... wait.. only 3:30pm... oh geez...

Re:A long history of litigation

[Frosty Piss]

...but is certainly a long laundry list of all their legal deeds.

Not really. They sued AOL and ATT, prior to targeting Apple. Not exactly a "long list". But certainly, they are a "litigation company", not a "technology comapany".

Article text

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Ad-free printer friendly version. Article text:

Klausner Technologies Inc said on Monday the company had filed a US$360 million suit against Apple and AT&T over voicemail patents that Klausner claims the Apple iPhone infringes.

New York-based Klausner said the lawsuit also names Comcast, Cablevision Systems and eBay's Skype as infringing its patent for "visual voicemail." The plaintiff seeks an additional US$300 million from the three.

Klausner said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas. A copy of the filing was not yet available from the court.

The suit alleges asserts that the defendants' Internet-based voicemail products and services violate a Klausner patent. It seeks damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million, according to the press release.

The complaint involves U.S. patent 5,572,576, the same one at issue in a suit Klausner filed in 2006 against voice-over-Internet telephone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. The two sides agreed to settle that earlier case in October 2007, according a spokesman for Klausner.

Vonage is now a licensee of Klausner's voicemail technology for its Vonage Voicemail Plus service, as is Time Warner Inc's AOL for its AOL Voicemail services, Klausner said.

A company spokeswoman said Apple's pioneering Newton personal digital assistant was covered under a licensing deal between Klausner and Japan's Sharp Corp, the manufacturer of the Newton, tied to Klausner's U.S. patent 4,117,542.

The suit naming Apple as a defendant targets the sleek visual voicemail application offered by Apple in its iPhone.

The company alleged in its statement that Cablevision's Optimum Voicemail, Comcast's Digital Voice Voicemail and eBay's Skype Voicemail violate Klausner's patent by allowing users to selectively retrieve and listen to voice messages via message inbox displays.

An Apple spokeswoman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said his company has not received the suit and would not comment until its lawyers have seen it.

"We haven't seen it," echoed a Cablevision spokesman, who declined to comment further.

The suit was filed for the plaintiff by the California law firm of Dovel & Luner in Texas. "We have litigated this patent successfully on two prior occasions," Greg Dovel of Dovel & Luner, said in the statement issued by Klausner.

Re:Article text

[arminw]

....The complaint involves U.S. patent 5,572,576.......

I looked up that patent and the claims they make. It sounds pretty much like a device I first used, attached to my SE/30 Mac in 1989. I still have this gadget and the Color Classic Mac I last used it with. The little box and its included software, enabled the Mac to receive voice, send/receive faxes and data and recorded these on the HD. Callers could be identified by name and calls could be listened to randomly from the on screen list. The little gadget also came with a microphone for recording various messages to be played back to the caller, depending who it was, time, day of the week etc. I could also call the Mac from any phone and after entering a PIN, listen to the messages. The main reason we switched to phone company provided voice mail is that it also answers when the phone is in use.

this again

[ILuvRamen]

Yeah they're a bunch of loser patent trolls but I hate Apple so I'm gonna go the other way with it. Why the hell don't they open the stupid patent database and see all the voicemail related patents. You'd think they'd find it and say "hey, maybe we shouldn't this." Whenever anyone ever comes up with a fantastic, patentable idea, they should check if someone else patented it first. That's just common sense!

Re:this again

[joeytmann]

now there is an idea......

Re:this again

[fleck_99_99]

Whenever anyone ever comes up with a fantastic, patentable idea, they should check if someone else patented it first. That's just common sense!

Don't confuse common sense with legal reality. It is typically discouraged for inventors to do their own prior art searches, because that could expose the company to be sued later for willful patent infringement with accompanying higher damages.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. However, I am a patent holder, so I've been down this road before...

Re:this again

[CastrTroy]

But there's so much crap in the patent system, that it's not feasible to go through searching for patents on every feature you come up with.

Re:this again

[wasabii]

define common sense.

in apple's case, it was probably more profitable to ignore it on the off chance they would get away with it. in linux' cases it's common sense to never look at patents ever in case you might accidently get polluted.

prgamatic entities make decisions in grey areas all day long.

Re:this again

[Prof.Phreak]

But there's so much crap in the patent system, that it's not feasible to go through searching for patents on every feature you come up with.

Which is why the patent system is only good for Big Corps, that can afford expensive lawyers to crush small inventors, and go against competitors. Nobody without expensive lawyers, deep pockets, and a large patent portfolio (to counteract) can ``invent'' anything new and survive to profit from it.

And this is precisely why patents were setup to being with!

Maybe patent law should be amended that an entity worth more than $10m (market cap) cannot be granted patents longer than 6 months (and cannot hold a patent longer than that), as it obviously has enough resources to profit from them on short notice. This would ensure the small inventors get to profit (right upto the point they become worth more than say $10m), and big corps can't hold small inventors (or each other) hostage to patent lawsuits.

Re:this again

[AndersOSU]

Whoa there, were do you work?

While inventors may be discouraged from doing their own prior art searches, that is only because in the next breath they are being encouraged to pay someone to do it for them. There actually is a valid reason for this, as the inventor likely knows so much about his invention that there is a fair chance that he either interprets everything remotely similar to be infringing, or he sees his device as being so specialized that nothing, in his mind, is similar.

Companies like apple, comcast, and ebay have people on staff whose sole responsibility is to search for prior art.

Re:this again

[ILuvRamen]

I might patent it actually

Re:this again

[kryten250]

Well get ready for court because I already patented the means of filing a patent.

Re:this again

[fleck_99_99]

I left that "have someone else do it" part out. That's a good point. Thanks for the correction...

no such thing

[mozkill]

Sorry, but there is NO SUCH THING as "visual" voice-mail. The words "visual" and "voice" are unrelated. i would throw this patent out on the basis that the patent lawyers dont understand the english language.

Re:no such thing

[coolGuyZak]

From the Oxford American Dictionary:

voice mail || (also voicemail)
noun
a centralized electronic system that can store messages from telephone callers.

visual |vi zh ol|
adjective
of or relating to seeing or sight : visual perception.
noun (usu. visuals)
a picture, piece of film, or display used to illustrate or accompany something.

So, while you cannot see voice, you can see your voicemail. Particularly, you can interact with it visually rather than audibly. I understand that it's fashionable to poke fun at marketing, particularly Apple's... but please do so with a modicum of common sense regarding the language.

Re:no such thing

[jon287]

Yeah, like patent law has any freaking thing whatsoever to do with the english language. I'd say that it is rather a deliberate, systematic perversion of the english language.

Re:no such thing

[bennomatic]

I don't know... Haven't you ever heard of synesthesia?

Re:no such thing

[mozkill]

there is a difference between a patent of a "visual representation of voicemail", which is the most ubiquitous form of this type of patent (http://www.google.com/patents?id=iPAoAAAAEBAJ&dq=5572576) and the kind that you describe , verses a patent of a "voice mail containing visual elements", which is what I was trying to describe. in any case, you are right, this case applies to the former, and by that count I am incorrect.

Re:no such thing

[Sneeka2]

That's why it's spelled "visual voice-mail," not "visual-voice mail."
Although the latter one might be awesome, thinking about it.

The courts in Eastern Texas...

[Anonymous Coward]

The jurors there must think there is only one type of lawsuit out there - patents. I can't see as how the court system there could have TIME for any other cases. I imagine a conversation: "Bubba, I got called to be a juror again." "Well Joe Bob, I guess there are a lot of patents out there just waiting to be all infringed on."

Re:The courts in Eastern Texas...

[rbanffy]

It would be funny to observe the psycho-social consequences of a community where most of the litigations are patent lawsuits from companies that are not located anywhere close and who have no relationship with their population.

It must be somewhat surreal, with the judges and jurors feeling like they, of all the world, have some unique insight into intellectual property nobody else has that drives companies to seek their wisdom and sense of justice about all things patentable.

It's impossible they never noticed that.

Big Money for a company with no website

[overbom]

You can read the patents in question here. It's an interesting suit -- I can't tell if Klausner has legitimate patents or not, but just because Vonage and AOL rolled over, it doesn't mean that Apple will (disclaimer: my blog link), especially not at those prices.

That high of damages makes me think they want Apple to settle. But that high of damages also makes me think Apple would rather invalidate their patents than settle.

Re:Big Money for a company with no website

[overbom]

doh, read the patents in question here.

Re:Big Money for a company with no website

[Dynedain]

but just because Vonage and AOL rolled over, it doesn't mean that Apple will

Except of course that Apple is one of the few entities to actually license Amazon's One-Click patent.

Re:Big Money for a company with no website

[overbom]

Apple licensed 1-click in 2000 so they could launch iTunes unfettered. Judging that they turned that into the #3 music retailer online or offline (and with less overhead than their offline counterparts), I'd say their licensing of the Amazon patent turned out to be a smart idea. Hindsight 20-20 and all.

Two weeks ago Apple turned a $60m Burst.com lawsuit jackpot into chump change, and they get access to Burst's patent portfolio for what amounts to $5m. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just sayin'.

And then

[El Lobo]

And then people bash MS when they patent something. How can one of the richest companies in the world defend theyselves from thoses sharks? You NEED to patent everything you have if you don't want to open your pocked every week. Defensive patents are a necesity these days.

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't bash MS for patenting stuff defensively in the USA, they weren't the people who introduced software patents in the USA - but you have to realise that MS also pushes for the INTRODUCTION of software patents where there are none (e.g. the EU). That is highly evil. Bill Gates demonstrated in the 90s that he understands patents and the harm they do to the industry perfectly well, as per his famous quote*. So Microsoft have chosen to be evil, tryng to dominate and rule us here in Europe through patent monopoly law, and they deserve the bashing they get.

*

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

Re:And then

[El Lobo]

You need to realize that TODAY there are no patents on the EU. But what if tomorrow the EU parlament aproves them? How could MS posibly survive the MILLION and MILLIONS os sharks then? Or do who do you think those sharks will attack first? MS or MyLitleAnnonymousShop.com?

Re:And then

[pavera]

A defensive patent would do nothing in this case.

This guy cannot possibly infringe on a patent because he doesn't actually produce anything. So Apple, MS, IBM can have millions of patents and they wouldn't be able to use them defensively here.

Re:And then

[Etrias]

WRONG! And by your statement you prove that you know nothing about patents, why they were necessary at one time, why they're mostly irrelevant when it comes to software and how much MS kool-aid you've drank lately.

The patent system is broke. It's underfunded, undermanned and because of outside pressures, it pretty much allows nearly any yahoo to come along with a specious claim and "patent" it. Defensive patents are being bought, yes, but without the proper due diligence, it's pretty much a road to nowhere.

Re:And then

[DECS]

Microsoft has very publicly used its patents to attack open source development.

Microsoft's Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source

Apple has a large patent portfolio, but we haven't seen many examples of Apple trying to destroy its rivals. After Creative attacked the iPod over rather weak ideas of patenting a menu, Apple used its portfolio to make a cooperative deal with Apple. Apple did the same to make peace with Microsoft, which had been violating Apple's OS and media patents egregiously in the mid 90s. Apple has a series of patent trolls on its back at all times, and puts them down in regular efforts that generally involve a minor settlement and the deletion of bad patents.

Compare Microsoft and Apple and their troubles with Burst: Microsoft just paid the trolls off with $60 million, hoping Burst would then thwart QuickTime. Apple actually annulled a wide swath of Burst's patents and settled for only $10 million, despite being a much fatter target than Microsoft (QuickTime/iTunes has far more revenues and profits than Microsoft's media efforts combined).

So suck it up. Microsoft is evil in the area of patents, both as a FUD/troll and a troll enricher. Until Apple starts doing the same things, you can't cry for Microsoft given the company's scandalous activity.

Winter 2007 Buyer's Guide: Microsoft Zune 8 vs iPod Nano

Re:And then

[Etrias]

It's hard to take anything you say seriously when your sig screams "partisan shill".

MS is trying to push through patents in the EU so it can start scaremongering over there like it's doing here already. Or haven't you heard about the "246 infringing patents in linux" bit from Balmer yet. No legal challenges (because they would lose) but enough to scare the companies to keep taking their MS medicine. Hey, have you heard...MS had its FAT file system patent challenged by PubPat. MS is no better than patent trolls, my friend. You need to take a look around before you make this rash call.

Or, if you're astroturfing, at least you're getting paid for this.

Re:And then

[Brickwall]

What is with any of my signatures that always seem to be so politically incorrect here in /.?

You must be new here.

Re:And then

[Etrias]

You can dislike Apple as much as you want. Knock yourself out, I don't really mind. Probably won't disagree with you on some of it. But if you are going down the road of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" road, then you don't really know much about MS. Plus, if your sig is all "Appel is teh suck" and your post is "poor poor MS has to defend itself, when will they get a break", then I may doubt the veracity of your being able to look at the subject objectively. It's something that sticks out a bit.

You are right, you have the right to say those things about Apple. I have the right to call them as I see them and perhaps challenge your objectivity.

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way you keep linking to your own crap to prove your own point. You are not an unbiased source, for purposes of verifying your own points, dumbass!

The truth of the matter is that Apple and Microsoft are both companies that actually do R&D, and make real products and sell them, so they are not patent trolls.

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple RETARDED UI dev in the 1980's by SUING every competing OS that tried to use XEROX idea which Apple STOLE. If it wasnt for APPLE then GEM might of worked and we wouldnt have had WINDOWS. Dumbass. we are all SICK of reading your SPAM.

Never even try to argue with roughlydrafted, he will crush you with his Apple Zeal. When you meet crazy people on the street carrying signs and placards explaining in great detail how the Clintons are in fact Lizard people from Venus here to suck our souls through the UN, don't even start reading the pamphlets. They will make a crazy kind of sense and suck you in because, let's face it, the Zealots have a lot of time to work on this garbage while you are out enjoying life. Same thing with roughlydrafted, just ignore it and eventually it will go away and bother someone else.

Re:And then

[Brickwall]

Have to agree, somewhat. I worked on the first Xerox Star system in Canada in 1980, about four years before the Mac was introduced (I also worked with the Lisa, Mac's mom). Personally, I think Xerox was incredibly stupid to walk away from the technology, but the Star had everything the first Mac UI did - icons, mouse, WYSIWYG word processing, etc. Jobs freely admits he toured Xerox's PARC facility in the early 80's, and that he saw the Star while there. In his defense, I think this was before this nonsense of broad software patents had emerged (as opposed to specific software patents, covering a particular program implementation, like Lotus 1-2-3; you could build a spreadsheet if you wanted to, but you couldn't copy Lotus's code. Note that Lotus was not the first spreadsheet, either; VisiCalc was.) Apple was more successful because they worked with others to develop better applications. I still think Lotus Jazz was years before its time. But for anyone to claim that M$ stole the graphical UI concept from Apple, well, they're just plain wrong.

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not often that you meet someone who dreams that everyone was using some decendent of GEM...Are you perhaps decerebrate ?

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no MS Kool-aid, that is an Apple product. There are only MS paychecks.

Visual Voicemail = Email with Audio Attachment?

[pwnies]

This, like many patent lawsuits today, is entirely ridiculous. Visual voicemail is essentially identical to an email with an audio attachment and a fancy wrapper around it. If these types of cases keep happening, corporate America is going to eat itself whole. We're going to see more and more people who's business model is to patent trivial things and try to lynch anyone who approaches something similar to it.

Re:Visual Voicemail = Email with Audio Attachment?

[Osurak]

Isn't that what's already happening?

Re:Visual Voicemail = Email with Audio Attachment?

[oftencloudy]

corporate America is going to eat itself whole.

and the downside is ?...

Re:Visual Voicemail = Email with Audio Attachment?

[gnuman99]

In that case, the greedy bastards behind Asterisk are infringing this poor inventor's patient as well! I get emails with voicemail attachments all the time!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111

</sarcasm>The above is sarcasm for politically correct moderators with no sense of homour

A List

[nwf]

Yes, seeing a list of things in a list format is so amazingly original. Just add "voicemail" and, sure it's patentable! I've been using internet-based "visual" voice mail for like 10 years. Octel VM systems come with a web option and have done so for at least 8 years. This patent, filed in 1977, is just being enforced now? Seems a good case for being invalid just based on the fact that they ignored all infringers until now. I skimmed that patent (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4117542.html) and I'm at a loss to see how it applies. They talk of being able to speak letters a numbers. Specifically, under "Talking Phone Book" it can read your phone number from an address book as well as displaying it. (a) not rocket science, and (b) not what Apple's product even does. Looks more like a patent on an electronic address book.

Re:A List

[queequeg1]

That's a link to the old patent (covered by the Newton license), not the patent that is the basis of the current claim. Too bad, since the old patent is long expired.

Re:A List

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that you have been using VM systems for 10 years, but the patent was filed 12 years ago.

Re:A List

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the friggin' patents! 16 years after the first Caller ID patent was filed, Klausner files a patent in 1992, that describes using manually entered DTMF (touch-tone) tones for the caller to identify themselves. A second Klausner patent filed in 1994, involves remote retrieval of messages, like Vonage did. I can see where Klausner might win a patent suit there against Vonage. The iPhone, on the other hand, stores its voicemail on the device itself. Retrieval of messages is a local process.

Re:A List

[bjourne]

If you read Slashdot a few months ago, you would find glowing reviews of the iPhone and its amazing and innovative visual voicemail features. Nowhere during the keynote did Steve Jobs say "it's just like email with wav files attached, very obvious." You can't have it both ways.

Re:A List

[DECS]

Actually the iPhone accesses VM from the service provider, just like any other mobile VM system, it just presents them with a visual UI rather than a "listen and hit buttons to navigate" conventional VM UI. Still, your point that the DTMF patent is a stretch for the iPhone remains.

Why Low Def is the New HD

Re:A List

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck does low def or high def have to do with voicemail. Fucking spammer. You want to sell your me-to website on slashdot why not pay for ads so we can block them.

Never even try to argue with roughlydrafted, he will crush you with his Apple Zeal. When you meet crazy people on the street carrying signs and placards explaining in great detail how the Clintons are in fact Lizard people from Venus here to suck our souls through the UN, don't even start reading the pamphlets. They will make a crazy kind of sense and suck you in because, let's face it, the Zealots have a lot of time to work on this garbage while you are out enjoying life. Same thing with roughlydrafted, just ignore it and eventually it will go away and bother someone else.

Re:A List

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that you mentioned Octel. I first encountered a system with this concept back in 1988 as a part of an ISDN/MacII/Octel/Southwesern Bell blend. This is hardly an original thought.

In fact, I think I may have seen some Apple promotional videos illustrating such a concept.

Not to mention Southwestern Bell is now AT&T.

Apple and AT&T together could make a compelling case of prior art. They certainly have enough documented research between them that would show this idea has been kicking around for years.

These guys may have bitten off a little more than they can chew.

Re:A List

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, seeing a list of things in a list format is so amazingly original. Just add "voicemail" and, sure it's patentable! I've been using internet-based "visual" voice mail for like 10 years.

Good thinking! I am going to patent Videomail.
Then, I am going to patent putting Videomails in a list and I'll call it Visual Videomail.
Then, I am going to patent Visual Videomail for use via the Internet.
Then, I am going to patent Internet Visual Videomail for use with digital devices.

And just in case, for a futuristic invention, I am going to patent Virtualrealitymail. And Visual VRmail. Plus Internet Visual VRMail. Everytime you get a message, it feels like you are transported before the eyes of the caller!

Because all innovation must be punished...

[KingSkippus]

I'm so tired of reading stories like this. The guy who is suing actually thinks he's not a patent troll. I read an article about this guy where he denies he's a patent troll. Here's an excerpt:

This sounds suspiciously like a patent troll treading down the litigation track. Yet, Klausner says: "I'd be as happy as a pig in mud if I never have to go to court again." That would be pretty tough to achieve in an increasingly litigious sector. Klausner puts some of the blame for this trend on the defendants. "The infringers are becoming more litigious. There are lots of theories as to why. On the whole everyone is becoming more litigious."

Riiiight, it's Apple's fault he has to sue them. He had an idea, and as far as I can tell, never saw, met, or discussed it with anyone at Apple. They happened to have a similar idea and acted on it, and now they have to pay. Dearly. Some more wisdom from him:

Klausner denies that his company is a patent troll, as he defines the term: "Just change the 'n' in inventor to 's'. These investors start up a fund and put patents in a portfolio. They see them as oil wells. I am an inventor. The value I bring to the universe is my ideas. I'm not a marketer or a manufacturer or a distributor. We are a company that invents and receives patents - my own - and licenses them."

I'm sorry, but I just don't see having an idea as meriting hundreds of millions of dollars. Acting on an idea, now that's worth something.

I have lots of ideas, too. I don't patent most of them, because I don't plan on acting on them, and I don't feel like I deserve hundreds of millions of dollars if someone else does. Even if there were something I feel like would make the world a better place, it's likely I wouldn't pursue it because I know I'd get sued into oblivion for just about anything I might do.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how patents spur innovation. Every time I read articles like this, patents are being used to hinder it.

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[merreborn]

Just change the 'n' in inventor to 's'

What the fuck is an "isvestor"?
We're supposed to believe this Klausner guy is a brilliant inventor, even though he's not aware there are two Ns in "inventor"?

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[syrinx]

Just change the 'n' in inventor to 's'.

I just sat here for about 10 seconds thinking "isventor? what?"

Did not get enough sleep last night, apparently...

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[KlomDark]

It's a bool that returns true if the person has their personal genome fully decoded:

isVentor() // http://www.jcvi.org/ // Spelled wrong, I know... Maybe this:

isVentor() // is relatively unknown geriatric Jedi http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Halagad_Ventor

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[SendBot]

Seriously! And how does one own an idea? If your phone rings and you are distracted by that enough to suddenly forget something you just thought of, did that person "steal" your idea? (defining theft as depriving someone of property)

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[neoform]

I'd like to see some of this guy's designed/products that have been infringed upon.. unless of course they're all still in his head.

Re:Because all innovation must be punished...

[byronblue]

damn, it's late and I thought it was the beer so I brushed it off and continued reading.

Filed in 'Eastern District of Texas' eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Klausner said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas. A copy of the filing was not yet available from the court.
=========
Gee lemme guest.. "Rocket Docket" Marshell Texas..at the Harrison County Courthouse.

Why not just come out at say it.. "Another patent troll case for the IP rathole of Harrison county"?

Hmm

[aarku]

Someone at Apple is going to throw an impeccably designed chair about this.

Re:Hmm

[gnuman99]

Someone at Apple is going to throw an impeccably designed chair about this.

That statement should have read,

Someone at Apple is going to throw an impeccably designed chair in California, made in China, about this.

Star Wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the famous scene in episode 4 with R2D2 "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope..."

Does that count as prior art?

Re:Star Wars?

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

Only if someone can find the cutting room floor footage of Obi-Wan selecting from a number of messages for him (maybe from Anakin) to play the one from the Princess.

I can see why it would be cut, it would give away the whole storey in the first half hour.

Even more legalized extortion , just so typical ..

[Anonymous Coward]

of a corrupt and evil system!

Just how low will the rich go?

No Surprises Here

[Nom du Keyboard]

Klausner has won on two previous occasions with this patent.

If they've won on this issue before, then this shouldn't come as any big surprise to anyone.

As for East Texas juries, their state should be ashamed of them, and they should be ashamed of themselves. The RIAA would probably file all their cases there, if they could.

hey, this should be fun

[m2943]

Given Apple's litigious history, it will be fun to see how this shakes out. Hand me the popcorn, please. No matter who loses, we all win.

Re:hey, this should be fun

[remohomer]

No, no no!!! No matter who wins, we all lose. Enjoy your popcorn.

Re:hey, this should be fun

[m2943]

Let me explain.

If Apple loses, a company that has been litigious and threatening gets a taste of their own medicine.

If Apple wins, a patent troll has been beaten.

Either outcome seems pretty good to me.

Haha

[Thirdlight]

Im pretty sure if I was a serial killer, I wouldn't call myself one either. Has anyone thought of how better off the world would b without people like this? I mean seriously, it's like u can patent something as obvious as breathing nowadays. Hrmm, think I better get out the books on that one. Oh, and hasn't yahoo/outlook/and countless others been allowing u to look at voice mail for years now??

Who says they didn't?

[tompaulco]

Perhaps their legal team thoroughly researched all the voicemail patents out there, and decided to give Apple/AT&T the thumbs up as their technology was sufficiently differentiated from the patented technology, and the differences would be bloody obvious in any court in the U.S. except for perhaps in East Texas.

Oops

[FireIron]

While I strongly feel that no one should be able to patent putting certain types of sequential data objects into a scrolling list widget (on the grounds that the invention is the widget, not the application of the widget to some kind of data), Apple has sort of hyped their way into a corner here, having touted this amazing feature of the iPhone as cool and innovative, they now cannot consistently claim that it is obvious and trivial.

Re:Oops

[M-RES]

"having touted this amazing feature of the iPhone as cool and innovative, they now cannot consistently claim that it is obvious..." Except that that's exactly how they marketed it from the very first developer conference!!! I believe Steve's words were something along the lines of "it's so obvious, we're surprised nobody's done it before". Given the disproportional amount of media hype over the iPhone - you'd have to have NO access to any kind of technology capable of receiving 'news' to miss the main selling points and 'features' of the iPhone prior to going on sale. This guy had plenty of time to act BEFORE the iPhone went to market and stop this supposed infringement of his patents. However, he didn't. He simply waited until Apple had sold 'x' million units in the US and then launched in more countries (UK, Germany) at which point changing the design of the existing phones would likely cost far more than settling with the plaintiff out of court. It's a frivolous lawsuit. End of... Perhaps in cases like this, the court should examine whether the situation for damages has been exacerbated by the plaintiff's failure to act to defend their own patents before a commercial product is widely available and widely owned. There's always the argument that he just didn't know his patents had been infringed until just now, but like I said, he'd have to have been living in a cave for the last year not to know about this 'revolutionary new way of accessing your voicemail'!

I'm done.

[lorenlal]

The wheels of invention have officially come spinning off. Visual voicemail? Does this cover video voicemail? If not, who owns the patent to that... And when do those lawsuits come?

If you own a patent, and have no desire to do anything with it, you're not helping innovation, nor are you protecting anything. You slow progress, and you hurt the people who actually do want to change the world. I'm starting to believe in the idea that the US has about 90 years left. At this rate, we won't be able to develop anything without getting sued. Plus, China will continue to block our products, copy them, and sell them back to us.

I feel a little better now. OK.. for a more reasonable reaction... How about: If you patent something, and you don't have some product to market utilizing that patent in less than 5(? I'm flexible) years, it goes out the window. The patent also expires after 15(3xinitial?) years. By then, you should have improved your product, and you should own the market enough to protect your inventions. If you get swallowed by competition the day after the patent dies, you sucked at running the business. Sure this opens up the possibility of someone coming up with an idea, patenting it, and intentionally not making a product to stop future patenting of the idea.... But is that any worse than what's happening now?

Re:I'm done.

[tekrat]

I'm starting to believe in the idea that the US has about 90 years left.

You're an optimist.

Between the RIAA suing the masses, Bush and Co. about to nuke the whole world, and Corporate America clamping down on what you can do with the stuff you are forced to buy (yes, they'll sue you if you don't make them a profit), China killing us with cheap garbage, all jobs outsourced to India, and what we have that can laughably be called an "economy" (saddled with enourmous debt), I'm giving "America" exactly until February of 2009. After that, we'll be burning the country to the ground (mostly so we can heat ourselves as none of us will be able to afford oil).

Feb of 2009, if I recall correctly, is when we switch over to Digital TV, and everyone still using rabbit ears suddenly doesn't get their bread and circuses. Once the populace is no longer distracted by "Dancing with the Stars", they might wake up and riot.

The way the world is going, our combined sanity can only hold out for so long. We are headed for a major disaster, the likes of which probably haven't been seen since the Dark Ages.

New Rule

[Boomer_Zz]

If you can think of it as an average Slashdot 10 year old, you can't patent it. Problem solved.

Re:New Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

the trick is to have your rule enforced. frankly, i don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. problem solved.

Patent to file: Making Life Easier

[Anonymous Coward]

I know obvious patent right? Try to have a meeting with upper management to make life easier...not so obvious is it (at least not to them).

!Patent Troll

[physicsboy500]

I don't want to say that his invention has enough merit to gain or loose a patent, but it seems many people are crying "patent troll" without knowing the specifics of the case.

this is the patent in question which specifically is an improvement of current voicemail systems which provides visual information. To add to that it was issued over a decade ago and was filed for in 1994. Priority may go back further. The claims specifically show the intended improvement of the voicemail system, and right off the top of my head I don't recall anything that complex regarding voicemail in 1994. Now it's pretty common because we have more than Pentium 133Mhz computers at the bleeding edge to power equipment, but back then something like this (while it maybe somebody did dream it up) was unheard of. I don't like that he did (as far as I can tell) nothing to advance the technology, but I don't think this patent is without some merit.

Re:!Patent Troll

[ivan256]

Just because something like this didn't exist back then doesn't mean the idea isn't obvious.

In fact, the patent doesn't actually list any claims regarding how do what the other claims describe. So essentially he patented only the obvious parts of visual voicemail.

We really need to return to the days where a working prototype was required to receive a patent.

Re:!Patent Troll

[ender_01]

But here's the thing, what did they do with this patent? Did they ever make a physical device that implemented this idea? If not, and if they just sat on the patent, then that smells an awful lot like a patent troll. I don't care if Apple/Vonage/whoever copied the idea of the patent if Klausner Patent Technologies (Patent being the keyword in the Assignee/Company name) didn't do anything with it. Patent Troll = someone who comes up with an idea, patents, and sits around waiting to sue anyone who DARES do something with the idea and make money off it.

Re:!Patent Troll

[CaptainPatent]

In fact, the patent doesn't actually list any claims regarding how do what the other claims describe. So essentially he patented only the obvious parts of visual voicemail. I just have to chime in here because the claims only have to describe the invention itself unless it is an improvement that needs a specific implementation. The specification is needed to describe the how of the patent claims.

Additionally, in order for it to be obvious in a court of law, there must be prior art which does something very similar and is generally more of a combination of art than a random step included by an examiner unless it's a very small step. (larger steps are generally seen as hindsight which is even easier to do for an invention this old). The gpp post is actually fairly on-target in pointing out that this is now an invention that's over a decade old and references were probably very scarce for such a system.

Re:!Patent Troll

[YukonTech]

So at what point did he try to do anything with this idea? Other than wait for someone else to do all the work so he can sue?

Re:!Patent Troll

[physicsboy500]

I suppose it comes down to your definition of patent troll. Before I respond I'll re-quote what I said earlier and clarify what I meant:

I don't like that he did (as far as I can tell) nothing to advance the technology, but I don't think this patent is without some merit. It seemed that many people in the above threads were referring to the applicant as a patent troll because his original patent does not have merit. That is the reason why the title of the post was "!patent troll."

Some people don't have the money to invest back in their ideas and (honestly) if you make the extended effort to get your invention licensed I don't feel personally that is trolling. I don't like patent holders that are sneaky and don't open their mouths about a patent until it is widely implemented. I feel that simple ethics should allow for a warning or two before legal action is taken, but I honestly don't know and the article didn't say whether he did that first.

Re:!Patent Troll

[ender_01]

You are right in that we don't know if they asked Apple, or the other companies they are suing about licensing possibilities, but I'm going to guess they didn't if they are suing all the companies at once. If they approached each company indivdually you would think they would sue on a more spread out schedule. But again, we simply don't know And also, I don't categorize this as an 'Invention'. This is an idea. Even if they came up with one solid implementation of this idea I would give them more credit an call it an Invention, but as far as I can tell they haven't. My understanding is that you actually make something (even if its just 1 unit), patent whatever that something does, try and go find funding/investors if you need to get your idea to market. It seems today we can completely skip steps 1 and 3 and go step 4 which is suing infringers. Does anyone know if these folks have approached ANYONE on licensing this idea? As no one has mentioned any particular device that all these companies seem to be copying then I'm going to guess that they haven't. And if that's true it just adds to troll fire.

Re:!Patent Troll

[houghi]

That subject looked like IPatent Troll to me , or something Apple could come up with.

Re:!Patent Troll

[wattrlz]

People patent, processes, machines, designs, and plants. According to the US patent office, anyway. One doesn't necessarily have to have a physical representation of what is being patented, that would make a lot of legitemate inventions a lot harder to get protected, just an effective example or description with enough information to determine what is being patented and if it is patentable. What was patented here was the process of visual voicemail, not the idea. Ideas are copyrighted.

I agree that something like this shouldn't be patentable, but, unfortunately, that's up to the patent inspectors to decide, and since there are about twelve of them at the moment it's unlikely they have enough time to do more than skim the abstract before stamping approval.

Re:!Patent Troll

[Serious Callers Only]

I don't like that he did (as far as I can tell) nothing to advance the technology, but I don't think this patent is without some [legal] merit.

Which makes this case a very good argument for dismantling the patent system as we know it. This guy has no product, and no intention of producing one; we don't need people like him in the world, and certainly don't need to encourage them.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Lose has one 'o'

Re:!Patent Troll

[pluther]

1994?

My NeXT, which I purchased in 1990, had a software program that would act as an "answering machine" - complete with a menu listing call, sorted by date/time, and who it was for. (The caller could hit a number on their phone's keypad to direct it).

If I had subscribed to caller ID, I believe it would have listed that, too.

I dunno what happened to all the NeXT patents when they went out of business, or if this app was even patented (I don't think it was part of the OS - probably a third-party tool I downloaded from an FTP site :), but there's definitely prior art, and Apple should have access to it.

Unless there's something more specific that they claim they're infringing than simply presenting voicemail in a visual list.

Re:!Patent Troll

[lucas teh geek]

it's been 15 years and they still have no product, only a string of lawsuits. I dont care if it's a valid patent or not, it's being used to do little more than stifle innovation and that's wrong.

Re:!Patent Troll

[Scamwise]

I agree, use it or lose it!

Re:!Patent Troll

[ivan256]

It's not that simple.

You can't file a patent for an arbitrary idea. At least not unless you do what this guy did, and write up your idea using sufficiently complicated legalese.

Let's "invent" something:

How about a book that remembers what page you were on automatically. When you close the book, it keeps track of what page you were on, so when you open the book the next time it opens to exactly the same page.

Neat, huh? If I filed a patent for that using simple terms, it would be denied. However if I drew up several claims, describing an ordinary book, and ordinary page turning, then simply added "means for remembering what page you are on" and "means for causing the book to open to the correct page" and other sufficient padding, I would probably get the patent. That is *exactly* what this guy did.

The problem with that is the actual invention is the means to do those things, and not the idea to invent those means. But nowhere in my mythical invention, nor in this guys patent does he describe what the means are. He left the novel part out of the patent. So now, when the technology exists to actually solve this problem, and when somebody other than him actually invested the capital to invent the device, he's coming along and saying that he deserves the profit.

What's worse about this particular patent is that it was filed right around the time where selecting arbitrary audio recordings from a list and playing them off random access media was becoming *very* common. Not only did he not specify an actual solution to a problem nor describe an actual device, but he was also filing a "something like that, but with a telephone" patent; so there is no reason why he couldn't have gotten technical.

Re:!Patent Troll

[caldaan]

Cases like this is what makes the patent/legal system ridiculous. From what I can tell this patent is an answering machine that has an address book feature, and uses the callers to MANUALLY type in their identifying information so that the voicemail messages may be tied to a specific person via the previously mentioned address book. I know for a fact that when I call my wife's iPhone I don't enter a bunch of DTMF signals so that she knows it is my voicemail and not someone elses. Thanks to a much newer invention called Caller ID, it is completely unnecessary to do such a thing. Since ATT, apple and all of the others use Caller ID to identify the caller then a patent using the method to create a visual voicemail system using DTMF to identify callers is not being violated. Especially since the purpose of Caller ID is to identify the caller, AND even linked voice mail systems attach the caller id to the voice mail header identifying the caller. Allowing random access instead of sequential access is pretty trivial since if it isn't sequential it has to be random. So why the heck did Vonage settle? Because they can't afford a court fight thats why. Things like this show a pattern of legal racketeering. We really need some new laws fast...

Re:!Patent Troll

[CaptainPatent]

Because I'm a patent examiner I'm not supposed to go on record as saying something is or isn't patentable, but I would like to point out that "means for" is not "complicated legalese" by any stretch of the word and a bookmark cited as prior art would still be sufficient to deny your "invention" a patent.

As for the state of the prior art with the case in question, I won't comment because I have not done extensive research into art which visually displays information concerning origin of voicemail to be selected (which is lay terminology for what is being patented) but I bet the fact they were visually displayed (as defined by the specification) vastly limited the prior art for this case. Also this was originally filed in 1994 with priority to 1992, so while you may be correct about selecting them from a list, selecting them from a visual list with caller ID info may be much more sparse.

You can go on all day about him using this patent irresponsibly and I would tend to agree, but I think he has a better claim to a patent than a fair portion of the /. community is giving him credit for.

Re:!Patent Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to patent the thought voicemail system. A system where by the user can playback message through thought, and select their messages form a list they receive by thinking about their most recent voicemail. Then, in like 30 years when somebody comes out with the technology to make this possible I'll sue them and retire rich. Trolling is a wonderful thing isn't it? I might even hedge my bet by creating a thought interface device....oh wait, that actually is in development.

Callwave

[mcwop]

Callwave offers a similar product (free to most anyone with any phone, computer, email - nice service), which I used before my iPhone. They are covered by patents:

• * Method and Apparatus for Providing Expanded Telecommunication Service, US Patent 6,477,246:
• * Methods and Apparatus for Returning a Call over a Telephony System, US Patent 6,738,461
  
• * Methods and Systems for Telephony Call Completion, US Patent 6,879,677
  
• * Method and Apparatus for Providing Expanded Telecommunication Service, US Patent 6,898,275
  
• * Call Routing Apparatus, US Patent 6,968,174
  
• * Systems and Methods for Call Screening, US Patent 7,103,167
  
• * Methods and Apparatus for Returning a Call over a Telephony System, US Patent 7,266,185
  

Whosoever Uses the Sword...

[MOBE2001]

LOL PATENTS RULE LOL

Yeah. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. IP laws are like swords that modern tech companies (Apple included) use to beat the rest of us into submission while they corner a market and reap mostly undeserved and exhorbitant profits. MSDOS was not worth billions of dollars, sorry. Whosoever uses the sword shall perish by the sword. In the end, IP laws will lead to violent wars, if they haven't already.

Re:Whosoever Uses the Sword...

[JimDaGeek]

I agree with you bud. The sad thing is that these patent trolls and their scum-bag lawyers know where to file suit to get the best judgment. It would be great if companies could ask for the trial to be held in a different court.

With that said, I don't feel bad for any of the companies involved. They have all abused the patent system and tried to sue over trivial "IP". I guess Karma is showing how things are done?

Re:Whosoever Uses the Sword...

[BootNinja]

They can always file for a change of venue, but those tend to be hard to get approved.

omg

[pak9rabid]

what a fucking choad of a company. keep it up trolls, the more you guys exploit the faulty legal system, the quicker it'll get patched...

AT&T prior art from 1995

[cbunix23]

IANAL, however, the AT&T Intuity Audix Message Manager is a desktop product that gives you random access to your voice mail messages. The Message Manager user guide dated January 1995 is on the Avaya site at:

http://support.avaya.com/edoc/docs/intaudix/iammusr1.pdf

Go to page 25 "Listening to your messages" shows how to select any voice mail message displayed on your screen. This wasn't rocket science. I wasn't involved with that products development, but I don't recall any patents being issued for it. Even at the time it seemed like an obvious thing to do and should be to any practitioner in voice mail.

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[cbunix23]

IANAL ... These two patents refer to using DTMF for random access to voice mail message. The iPhone doesn't use DTMF to access voice mail messages. Neither does Message Manager. How do these patents have any bearing on the iPhone ?

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[DustyShadow]

The patent in suit, 5572576, was filed Mar 15, 1994. The ATT thing you speak is after that date and thus cannot be used to rule the patent in suit as obvious. Obviousness is determined by date of filing, not date of issuance.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=iPAoAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,572,576
I doubt this was real obvious in 1994. Good luck. As the summary says, they've already won before with it. Thus, I doubt it'll get rule as obvious. I doubt the new Supreme Court cases will help.

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[DustyShadow]

I am not familiar with this technology but am familiar with patent law. A quick search through the claims does not mention DTMF. I am assuming you read the "DTMF" that is in the abstract of the patent and in the specification (the part that comes before the claims). The claims are what define the invention and the limitations from the spec are not allowed to be read into the meanings of the claims. The descriptions with "DTMF" are most likely descriptions of possible uses of the invention.

It is a common mistake here on /. The abstract and spec DO NOT define the boundaries of the invention. Keep that in mind

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[harish.babu]

FYI the patent in question here was applied for in March 1994. So maybe this might not be proof enough of prior art.

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[cbunix23]

Message Manager was released in 1995. We were working on it and running it internally before that. AT&T had it prior to 1995, it just wasn't available to the public. I'll see what I can dig up in the archives at work ( Alcatel-Lucent ). All the documenation / source for enterprise products was given to Avaya when Avaya was spun out of Lucent, so we may not have anything on it anymore. I know a couple people that worked on it and they are still around, I can ask them. And yes, even then it seemed obvious to me.

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[DustyShadow]

We were working on it and running it internally before that. AT&T had it prior to 1995, it just wasn't available to the public Unfortunately, to be used to rule a patent obvious, the information/documentation/use etc. must be available to the public before the filing date. Secret use by someone else won't be enough. I think it may actually have to be at least a year before the filing date but I just woke up and my brain isn't fully awake yet.

Re:AT&T prior art from 1995

[GooberToo]

Here is a metric for obvious. Has anyone ever used a status indicator or tone to indicate the status or change in status of something? Simple fact is, yes we have, for hundreds of years. This patent is obvious to anyone that has seen any facet of civilization for the last several hundred years. Heck, this patent is obvious to anyone who has ever had a mail box.

When I was a kid in the 70s, mailboxes had a flag. It's logically the exact same thing.

Eastern District of Texas

[Anonymous Coward]

"The new suit was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, of course." Why is the location of where the suit was filed of any importance?

Re:Eastern District of Texas

[vistic]

Thank you Google:

"There were 16 patent cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas in January 2007. That's one every other day. 75% were filed by trolls. Why do trolls like the Eastern District of Texas? That's easy. That district, comprised of courts in Marshall, Tyler, Texarkana, and other locales, consists of conservative jurors who think the government (and, by extension, the Patent Office) can do no wrong, and who favor patentees more than anywhere else in the country."

Eastern Texas?

[JimDaGeek]

For those not familiar with the area (Eastern District of Texas), what is up?

Does the Eastern district just give away money to any patent troll?

Can Apple, AT&T, etc ask to have the case heard some where else?

Re:Eastern Texas?

[kanweg]

Some people, especially those on jury duty, are even better at giving other people's money away.

Bert

Re:Eastern Texas?

[MavEtJu]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas and http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/05/eastern-district-of-texas-january-2007.html for more details about why there.

Re: no, it is publish or perish

[kanweg]

"You NEED to patent everything you have if you don't want to open your pocked every week. Defensive patents are a necesity these days."

No, all you have to do is make your idea public (in a way it can be implemented), and no other person can get a patent on it. Please do it such that it can be found.

Bert
Patent attorney against software patents

Parent Assumes Way Too Much

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall the article saying anything about whether or not the inventor contacted any of these companies first or if he did attempt to license and get brushed off. I'm not going to say he did, but I don't see how he should be considered a patent troll based off assumption.

The nuclear rocket patent!

[argent]

Feynman's autobiography, where he describes how he became the primary patent holder for the nuclear rocket:

We discussed it back and forth - by this time we're in his office - and I
say, "There are so many ideas about nuclear energy that are so perfectly
obvious, that I'd be here all day telling you stuff."

"LIKE WHAT?"

"Nothin' to it!" I say. "Example: nuclear reactor... under
water... water goes in... steam goes out the other side... Pshshshsht --
it's a submarine. Or: nuclear reactor... air comes rushing in the front...
heated up by nuclear reaction... out the back it goes... Boom! Through the
air -- it's an airplane. Or: nuclear reactor... you have hydrogen go through
the thing... Zoom! -- it's a rocket. Or: nuclear reactor... only instead
of using ordinary uranium, you use enriched uranium, with beryllium oxide
at high temperature to make it more efficient... It's an electrical power
plant. There's a million ideas!" I said, as I went out the door. Nothing
happened.

About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says, "Feynman,
the submarine has already been taken. But the other three are yours."

Re:The nuclear rocket patent!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The real funny part is what Feynman did to Clark for that invention. Smith gave Feynaman some routine paperwork to sign the patents over to the government for 1$. He signed it over and demanded that one buck. Since no one actually wanted that dollar, Smith had no idea of how to start the paperwork to pay Feynman his 3 dollars. So he gave it from his pocket. Feynman went to a bakery and bought dozens of donuts and bagels and distributed it saying it is from that dollar for his invention. Many of the people in the Manhatten project had dozens of patents signed over to the government for one dollar. They all came dunning for their dollar. Feynman throughly enjoyed the spectacle.

Mod parent up!

[argent]

This is the real point. The only possible patent that could be used against patent trolls that I've EVER heard of was one IBM filed covering automatic patent portfolio licensing that could possibly be interpreted as a business model patent for patent trolling. :)

damages?

[greengrocer]

Can someone explain to me how Klausner lost $660 million of profit from an *idea,* though legally patented, that he has not attempted to bring to market for 13 years? Is that figure just made up in an attempt to encourage the defendants to settle out of court for mere tens of millions instead?

Peachy. I guess corporate government of the future will fix patent trolling by declaring the trolls the equivalent of terrorists. Don't close Gitmo just yet!

It helps, but often that still comes too late

[Pinky's Brain]

Spending a lot of time dwelling on engineering for applications which aren't even relevant now (for instance applications which only become interesting with widespread broadband or mobile phones with teraflop computation capability) is not something of interest to most reasonable engineers. Art obvious to practitioners will only be discussed when it starts becoming useful ... and it becomes useful to patent trolls long before it becomes useful to anyone else. So they are the first to "discuss" it (if you can call submarined patents discussion).

What's the solution? I see none. Only obviousness stands in the way of patent trolls and even without the TSM test it only reduces their chances of success slightly (it's purely subjective and nothing a little venue shopping won't help with, besides ... they don't need a very high success rate).

pwned!

[Anonymous Coward]

You and the moderator apparently don't own iPhones, and you both apparently claim to have knowledge that you don't possess. That can get one in a heap of trouble in some places.
FYI: The iPhone can play back its Visual Voicemail messages while in "airplane" mode. As I stated, the messages are stored on the device. With 4-8 GB memory, this really is practical compared to typical Symbian, Treo and WM devices that have basically no memory to spare. This also avoids the remote control aspects of Klausner's patents.

Re: TFA misleading, nothing to do with visual vm

[jnadke]

TFA is misleading, as the original patent doesn't specifically have anything to do with the visual interface. The visual interface may be covered by a prior patent that is being refereced.

What the company is claiming is a method of linking several voice messages to certain caller identities, and then allowing the user to select an identity and play back a specific voice message associated it. Essentially combining an answering machine with caller ID. The patent was issued in 1994.

As I see it, Apple has three choices:
1) Settle. Companies usually list exorbitant damages ($300 million) to get the attention of other companies or scare them. Apple could likely settle for 10 times less ($30 million).
2) Litigate. They could try to find prior art, or try to invalidate it through other arguments.
3) Change. They could change the iPhone system to display all the voicemail messages in chronological order, then allowing the user to select a time-ordered message and it displays caller information in a separate menu. They could use a marking system to identify if you've already checked a message or not.

Most companies do #1, or try to do #2 and then do #3 when they lose.

Hrrm... perhaps I should patent number 3 now, and then sue when the implement my patent to get out of the other patent...

Still has no merit

[Pinky's Brain]

Just because it has legal merit doesn't mean it is of any worth.

The patents in question

[rdean400]

...essentially cover allowing users to selectively retrieve voice mail messages using an inbox-type display.

How is NeXTSTEP's mail app (with integrated voice support) not prior art?

AOL and Vonage may not have been able to turn up prior art, but Apple owns NeXTSTEP. It would seem reasonable for them to fight it, considering the damages claimed. If the suit weren't filed in patent troll central, it would seem to be a no-brainer.

Re:The patents in question

[atomicgirl]

Furthermore, can't Apple (or anyone, for that matter) request re-examination on the patent-in-suit?

Though I suppose the patent office doesn't work fast enough for re-examination to to be considered within the timeframe of this case?

Re:The patents in question

[tqft]

Didn't I see this in The Jetsons?

visual voicemail is nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was working at SGI in the late 90s, the IT voice services developed software to all persons to manage their voice mail and play back messages from their computers with a slick GUI. In fact, they called it "Visual Voicemail"

Re: TFA misleading, nothing to do with visual vm

[Anonymous Coward]

"settle for 10 times less"

In English we say "settle for one tenth of the amount".

While you were out

[walterbays]

Speaking of prior art, Accessline for almost 10 years has been selling voice mail integrated with email and a desktop applet.

Long before that I used a type of visual voicemail which we referred to as the secretary. [S]he would take voice messages using a speech to text mechanism dubbed the pencil. The user interface was an array of pink sheets of paper labeled While You Were Out. Think of them as pop-up windows, affixed to your desktop - computer desktop or oak as the case may be. Each dialog would give the caller's name, time of call, urgency, caller ID to return the call, and the message. You would dismiss the dialog by crumpling it and throwing it into the trash can. In another early innovation you didn't need a special command to empty the trash can. Something called a "janitor" would come by daily to do so.

Xerox PARC had that in 1985

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw Visual Voicemail at Xerox PARC in 1985! And how different is "visual voicemail" from voicemail with call display? I mean, really.

Soundblaster/CDROM kit sold by Borland

[Anonymous Coward]

I got that with the Soundblaster card/CD-ROM kit sold by Borland in the late 80's/early 90's. Still have the machine here and the floppies.

The software showed a list of voice-mails, including time received. I don't know whether the caller ID worked since I used it in Europe. As said, the software lets selectively listen to the voice messages. It also features optionally multiple mailboxes (with a voice prompt to enter the mailbox number) and was shipped standard with the multimedia Soundblaster card and CDROM player sold by Borland.

Why Always Texas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the judges get a commission or something?

that's the problem right there

[Scudsucker]

We are a company that invents and receives patents - my own - and licenses them.

He invents patents, he doesn't patent inventions. Pure patent troll.

Re:that's the problem right there

[KingSkippus]

He invents patents, he doesn't patent inventions. Pure patent troll.

I think he means, "We are a company that invents and [a company that] receives patents..."

I do agree that he's a pure patent troll, though. He sits around and patents ideas without doing anything to develop them. Then, he waits for someone else to come up with the same idea. He watches as they develop it, market it, sell it, and become successful with it. After he sees that such an idea is a success, he pounces and extorts money from the people who actually made it a reality. If they don't pay up, he takes them to court and sues for millions.

Either way, he gets very rich for doing nothing. I'm sorry, but having an idea is not work, and people shouldn't be rewarded for it unless someone specifically agrees to pay them to do so. Take a second to ponder this: If everyone just sat around on their asses coming up with ideas and patenting them, and no one actually did anything, how far would we go with that? The answer is, of course, nowhere; we'd still be in the dark ages.

ASCII Finger

[Tablizer]

Hell, I've sent the ol' Ascii Finger in the mid 80's many times.

Maybe ask Ericsson

[tuomoks]

The patent describes an Ericsson PPX/pager/phone system I was using in early, mid 80's perfectly except it didn't use names to display the caller but the telephone numbers.
Once you contacted(phoned) the PPX you got the names of the caller(s) in voice (if programmed in PPX) and a list of messages by caller in any order you selected. You could listen, skip, delete and archive those messages for later use. You could also tell the PPX to call back the caller or reroute the calls to another phone(user) or start a conference call or etc.. But no visual except there were "intelligent" phones which gave you the list of numbers on a small display, number and time of each message, capability to listen any or none, save or delete and archive, call back the caller, etc.
So, the only real difference was the visual maybe because of the technology at that time. Now - there was even earlier the huge (and expensive) IBM PPXs, I just don't remember all its capabilities but they did interesting tricks with messages no matter in which country you were and maybe it did show the names on 3270(heh!)
Really have to wonder what can be patented today and how broken the whole system is! It is so obvious to connect names to numbers / messages / whatever once you have a little memory and a small processor. And caller ID.

Re: TFA misleading, nothing to do with visual vm

[arminw]

.....What the company is claiming is a method of linking several voice messages to certain caller identities.......

That is exactly what my SE/30 Mac did in 1989. It used a plug in modem type device together with some software to record voice calls and display caller info on the screen. It also sent and received faxes and data. It was smart enough to differentiate automatically between voice calls, faxes and data.

AT&T and other prior art from early 1994

[cbunix23]

I found some early Message Manager documentation in our archives.

The technical prospectus ( which would be very early in the product cycle ) is dated March 25, 1994. The Release 1.0 requirements are dated March 11, 1994.

A development plan is dated April 6th, 1994 ( after the patent filing date ), however the document version number is 0.6. The status date of the document was December 2nd, 1993, which I think is the same as creation date.

One undated document, but added to the database on Jan 12th 1994, says the "competition has announced GUI interface to voice mail products including Northern Telecom, VMX, Active Voice, AVT, Octel and others", and goes into some detail on each one.

It sounds to me like this patent was filed back then as a patent time bomb, that is, let products get built that infringe on the patent and then years later file big dollar lawsuits. Nice business strategy. Hopefully there is enough prior art here to kill this lawsuit.

Re:AT&T and other prior art from early 1994

[Solaris4Ever]

The AT&T 7300 (aka "Unix PC") from the '80s could take messages as email attachments,
if it had the "Voice Power" (voice-grade digital audio and touch-tone recognition)
board and accompanying software installed. I don't think it did Caller-ID (indeed,
I think it predated widespread availability of Caller-ID), but it certainly provided
random acess to messages.

I would expect that commercial call center equipment and software has had such capabilities
(including something like Caller-ID) well before they were widely available to the consumer.

Something seems clearly wrong.

[joeyblades]

I read both patents and both of them specifically say that the data is encoded via DTMF by the caller. Apple's mechanism doesn't rely on DTMF encoding (or any other kind of encoding from the caller), but rather uses the caller ID and voicemail flags from the carrier. Since the patents are so implementation specific and clearly not the implementation that Apple chose, this seems like an open and shut case.

Re: TFA misleading, nothing to do with visual vm

[WinterSolstice]

Had that too, and a Windows 3.1 version that did the same thing. This is yet more proof of why software patents are BAD.

Of course, the best example is VMS... TONS of software patents on stuff that was incredibly advanced at the time, lots of which is still far ahead of the game. All locked up in patents being traded around like baseball cards.

Drives me nuts.

early prior art

[Barry Arons]

I did most interesting things with voice mail (including "visual voice mail") and telephones in my Master's thesis in 1984. this predates by a good margin most voice mail systems. for the best quick overview see the video at http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~barons/phone-slave-video.html for full references, including my thesis, see the "Phone Slave" section near the bottom of http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~barons/AronsAnnotatedBibliography.html