If you have never heard of a company called Rates Technology, then you soon will. It seems like this is going to be the new new NTP, only instead of wireless email, it will be the patent “big stick” when it comes to VoIP. The company has sued Google for patent infringement over the VoIP aspect of Google Talk program. I am still poring through the complaint, but Gary “Research Santa” Price says that the company has patent agreements with about 700-odd VoIP equipment makers, including the likes of Cisco, Nortel etc. Rich Tehrani had something on them way back when, and I will be digging into this more. Here is the full complaint in PDF.
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8:43 PM PT
[...] Om Malik reports that unknown Rates Technology Inc is suing Google for patent infringement related to Google Talk. Om points to the suit, which includes the two patents Google is alleged to have infringed. One patent is for a least cost routing appliance, while the other is for the database technology required to implement a least cost routing scheme. [...]
6 comments so far
1:56 PM PT
IANAL, but that patent hardly looks relevant to what Google is doing..at least the ‘085 patent. It references specifically and extensively telephone parts and widgets. If Google was a “normal” VOIP provider that used a telephone, I could see that being construed as a violation of the patent. As it stands, though, I’d be surprised if Google doesn’t put up a fight over this patent’s applicability.
Just my $0.02.
D.
3:39 PM PT
This looks like an issue the AOL deal can fix. Since Google and AOL plan to make their instant messaging systems talk to each other, how difficult would it be for Google to license TotalTalk and use it in GTalk?
4:57 PM PT
RTI and Mr Weinberger,its president were the same company/people that tried to disrupt the private pay telephone industry in the late 80’s and early 90’s with similar patent cases as they related to private pay telephone equipment’s call rating technology embeded in the equipment,
I will have to look into it further? etc…
FYI
6:39 AM PT
I believe that the future of VoIP does not reside with the equipment manufacturers. That is whay we started Virttel Networks a totally software solution for VoIP that is very Business Friendly and to date is the only ‘Secure’ VoIP that we can find.
11:38 AM PT
Any updates on this !?
10:04 AM PT
I cannot believe this … I used to work for a PBX company back in 1985 and Gerry Weinberger’s RTI had a deal with them to provide them with a Least Cost Routing database for every PBX customer… My job was to help RTI move their software on a VAX/VMS from a Radio-Shack TRS-80 system … In the middle of the project, this guy tried to hire me offering me $ 25K on top of what I was making at that time - some businessman … My company almost sued him - I wish they had done it…
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