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$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.
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.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
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.
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.
I don't know, but it works for me.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
The original generic sig.
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?
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
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.
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.