$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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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"?

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?

!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.

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.

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."