by Playfuls Staff |
29th December 2005
Patent-related lawsuits have become more and more frequent during the last year, and that’s usually because there are certain relatively unknown companies who have registered the respective patents, and now are ready to collect huge royalty fees.[more]
Actually, that’s what also happened in the case of the giant of searches, Google. The company is being sued by quasi-unknown Rates Technologies over a patent regarding the VoIP component from the Google Talk program.
Rates Technology says that two patents they hold (awarded in 1995, 2001) for minimizing the cost of long distance calls using the Internet are being infringed upon by Google Talk. Copies of these two patents along with one more mentioned in the filing are included in the complaint.
Rates Technology is asking for a jury trial along with enforcement of the patents, damages including the loss of profits so provide a royalty, a preliminary injunction against Google and attorney's fees.
Nevertheless, who is Rates? Well, it’s one of those companies that really doesn’t do almost anything else than draw money from bigger firms that actually use the technology patented by Rates.
TMCnet publisher Rich Tehrani said, in a blog entry, that Rates Technology has also sued Nortel, Sharp Electronics and others over patents it holds.
The blog post also mentions that Rates Technology CEO, Jerry Weinberger and Rates Technology have patent agreements in place with 700-800 companies and have litigated 25 times in 15 years. Well, no wonder, since this is the company’s main field of activity.
Remains to be see what will happen, but it’s very likely that Google will pay up in order to continue using the GTalk, as so many other companies did before.
