Klausner says "not so fast," sues Verizon and LG over visual voicemail

So patent holding firm Klausner Technologies figures it has this whole litigation thing down to a T at this point, having already sued a who's-who of companies having anything to do with visual voicemail in the past and ultimately coming away with a whole bunch of lucrative license agreements for its efforts (eleven, to be exact). Needless to say, any new company that tries to break into the game at this point is probably going to get treated with the same warm, fuzzy love, and Verizon and LG are experiencing that firsthand. Klausner has announced that it has filed suit against both companies in Texas federal court, presumably in response to Big Red's recent launch of the refreshed Voyager featuring visual voicemail software on board. Given the track record Klausner has, guys, you might just want to cut to the chase here and pay up.

[TMFAN @ Aug 26th 2008 8:20PM]

Of course it'll be in Texas...

[Jeebus @ Aug 28th 2008 1:11PM]

What exactly does this patent cover? I'm reasonably certain I've seen answering machines that would display the number of voicemails and the number of whoever left the voicemail over 20 years ago.

[dazepro @ Aug 26th 2008 8:20PM]

So does that mean they sued AT&T as well, or is this a company that is owned by AT&T or at least getting rights from them?

[Malfoy Roark @ Aug 26th 2008 9:20PM]

I'm pretty sure ATT is one of the companies that paid up (i.e. they are one of the 11 companies who are licensing it).

[grull27 @ Aug 26th 2008 8:27PM]

I hope when the lawsuit is all done with, Verizon offers visual voicemail for free.

[talos @ Aug 27th 2008 12:12AM]

Don't count on it. This is Verizon we're talking about. I can't even use the GPS chip in my Voyager without paying them.

[Bassir @ Aug 26th 2008 8:29PM]

Visual voicemail is how voicemail was always supposed to be.

[cawasley @ Aug 26th 2008 9:33PM]

Come on, stop the copyright infringement already...

[Tonicboy @ Aug 26th 2008 10:07PM]

Not to be a nitpicker, but... this is an issue of patent infringement, not copyright.

[Jon Doe. @ Aug 26th 2008 9:41PM]

Yah know if this was filed anywhere other then TX they would not only loose the judge would probably fall off the chair laughing. But hey. What's to say.....its TX after all.

[Sebastian @ Aug 26th 2008 9:43PM]

WTF is wrong with our society? With all due respect but this copyright/patent stuff is getting silly - what world is it when we are not able to build on each other's work?
I see the value of patents for technical inventions and I see the need for a fair compensation for the 'brain power' behind some products but come on, what is reason for 'protecting' an idea like visual voicemail, the one-click purchase, linking on the web etc.?

[Technophile @ Aug 26th 2008 10:11PM]

It's one thing to build on another's work, it's an entirely different thing to steal their work and then sell it for profit (aka Verizon Visual Voicemail)

[Tonicboy @ Aug 26th 2008 10:11PM]

Normally I would agree with you that copyright/patent litigation is way out of control, but in this case, is it really a super-obvious idea? maybe it seems so in retrospect but then why, in the 20-odd year history of voicemail, has no one else done it? seems like an original enough idea to warrant some protection and if these were the first guys smart enough to file a patent, congrats to them.

[silencer @ Aug 27th 2008 1:33AM]

I think you'd feel differently if someone was "borrowing" your work.

[smile @ Aug 27th 2008 3:08AM]

@Technophile, silencer:

Two people can come up with the same idea independently and the one who didn't file the patent first shouldn't be punished.

Given that:

1) an idea like this is so obvious. Anyone who's used Outlook would come up with the same idea.
2) the patent holder didn't implement it (so it wasn't a product in the marketplace)
3) at least 13 others have implemented the idea

probably means that many people have come up with the idea independently and weren't reading the patents. So there
was no borrowing/stealing.

How can any company innovate nowadays without tripping over a patent?

[MediumSizedRob @ Aug 27th 2008 11:57AM]

Right, innovate means innovate. Think of something new. If someone already thought of it, and bothered to take the necessary legal steps to protect the idea, that is their legal patent. What is so hard to comprehend here? If you're sitting in your Verizon cubicle and have a EUREKA! moment, but someone already had the idea, then that is not a new idea. Yeah you thought of it independently, but it's already been thought up and protected.

So what if you haven't produced anything with it? Some guy comes up with a great idea but doesn't have the resources to start his own manufacturing plant.. he's screwed while he watches a corporation finally come up with the idea 10 years later? No, that's his idea, he took the steps to publish and protect the idea, he gets credit and he gets compensated for it. Just because an idea isn't a physical object doesn't mean its not a valuable resource that shouldn't be rewarded.

"aww but I coulda thought it up myself!" Yeah but you didn't... and if you did, you didn't do anything about it.

[Paul Rivers @ Aug 27th 2008 2:44PM]

Yeah, WTF?? One click check-out? Visual voicemail?

I don't even have a parody to make - reality is a parody of itself.

Patents are:
1. Supposed to protect you from having a non-obvious idea, implementing it, then someone else sees what you did and copies it and makes a ton of money off copying your idea.

Patents are NOT:
2. Supposed to protect you from having a idea, implementing it, then someone else who never saw or heard of you or your implementation has the same idea and does their own implementation and makes a ton of money off it.
3. Supposed to protect you from having a completely obvious idea, patenting it, then stopping other people from using it.

The issue is with proving it - how do you know you didn't just copy someone else? That's where we run into this thing where the person who patented it first wins - because it's so difficult to prove that you didn't just copy them.

In my personal opinion, it's one thing to say that I came up with an original and non-obvious idea (like using radio waves to transmit my voice in 1890), patented it and can protect it (and patents are designed to expire after a certain time period, they don't last forever). It's a completely different thing to be able to patent incremental improvements that 1,000 people have also already thought of, but you just happened to patent first like visual voicemail, or "using 2 different frequencies so a person can talk and hear the other person talking at the same time over radio waves" or something.

[Phoenix987 @ Aug 26th 2008 11:04PM]

Isn't visual voicemail sort of a contradiction. If there was meant to be a visual, it wouldn't be called VOICEmail...

I've got to agree though, so many lawsuits. We'll see about 500 Engadget articles in the coming months of these lawsuits being "settled" in a way in which the customer gets screwed somehow.

[waiownsyou @ Aug 27th 2008 12:07AM]

What do you want then, Visualmail? Hmmm. Video everytime you can't answer a call.... screw this crap, I'm dropping out of college and getting a patent on that so I can license it!

[ajfarson @ Aug 27th 2008 2:00AM]

Verizon and LG are considering the lawsuit a cost of doing business. I guarantee that it was included in the cost and product pricing analysis way before any of us heard of the new feature. Of course it might have been easier to just purchase license from the patent holder rather than going to court... big business... big mystery.

[brian @ Aug 27th 2008 11:16AM]

I own the patent on the arial font, you all need to pay up now.

[MediumSizedRob @ Aug 27th 2008 11:27AM]

If you use technology that someone else owns the legal patent to, yes you should pay them. If you thought it up independently (we all know that they did NOT in this case, since several phones already have this service) but didn't bother to register the patent, then you're out of luck. I'm sure many of us - myself included- thought something like this would be a great idea before it was ever implemented, but I can't all of the sudden offer my own service and claim I had the idea 11 years ago on my own so I don't need to pay licensing.