JURIST - Paper Chase: 'Visual voicemail' inventor sues telecoms for patent infringement

[JURIST] Inventor Judas Klausner filed a patent infringement suit Tuesday against nine companies, including Google, Inc., Verizon Communications, and LG Electronics [corporate websites], alleging that they infringe on his visual voicemail technology patent. The technology involves providing a visual list of voicemail through which a user can view and retrieve individual messages. In anticipation of Klausner's attack, Verizon brought an action [complaint, PDF] seeking a declaratory judgment that their proprietary visual voicemail services do not infringe on the inventor's patents. Reuters has more.

Klausner, inventor of the personal digital assistant (PDA) and the electronic organizer, has successfully brought suit for infringement against multiple telephone companies, voice-over-internet providers (VoIP) [FCC backgrounder], and internet service providers, including AOL, Time Warner, and eBay. Klausner filed [complaint, PDF] a similar claim against Apple Computer and AT&T late last year, alleging that the technology used by Apple's iPhone infringes on the same visual voicemail patents. The parties settled in July [Reuters report] after the patents were licensed to Apple, but the financial details of the settlement were not disclosed. Last October, internet VoIP Vonage settled a patent lawsuit [JURIST report; press release] concerning Vonage's use of Verizon's technology.

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