Katie MarsalThe privately held Klausner in December formally charged the two companies with treading on its patented technology by offering Visual Voicemail service on the iPhone which lets customers see a graphical list of their voicemails and choose only the ones they want to hear.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that the Apple handset and other visual voice messaging services implemented by AT&T infringed on Klausner’s U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818.
Neither the licensing fees nor the other terms of the settlement announced Monday were made public, though Klausner was originally seeking damages and future royalties estimated at $360 million.
Klausner, which is owned by a group of private investors, also told Reuters that it has struck a licensing deal with eBay, and is presently in discussions to achieve similar results with Comcast and Cablevision. Lawsuits against those three firms had also been pending.
Klausner has also in the past successfully defended and then licensed its two visual voicemail patents to other industry heavyweights that provide visual voicemail services, including Time Warner’s AOL for its AOL Voicemail services and Vonage Holdings for its Vonage Voicemail Plus services.
Charles Martin
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18 Comments
and this company always wanted to build their patent, right. what a pathetic system.
and this company always wanted to build their patent, right. what a pathetic system.
that's capitalism.
Visual voicemail! What nonsense. Choosing what voicemails you want to listen to and which you don't, I remember using that technology [online] A DECADE AGO. How might you ask? Through some company I can't remember who attempted a free voicemail free 800 number thing for awhile.
Damn it all.
It's one thing to patent some thing and THEN use it, but to just patent good ideas and do nothing, that's just a waste of talent save it for someone else.
I like patents in US. It is like the coolest things on earth. You can charge and sue people whenever you want after you patents everything under the sun.