Google Talk Targeted In Patent Lawsuit

JamesAlfaro wrote to mention an Ars Technica story, which goes into the recent filing of a suit against Google Talk. A Delaware corporation claims that Talk infringes on two of its patents. From the article: "You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services. By all appearances, RTI is a company that was set up to collect licensing fees and pursue settlements related to the company's patent portfolio. Gerald J. Weinberger, president of Rates technology Inc., once said that the company was 'an enterprise based on patent licensing,' and that much of its business depended on the courts." Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?

Who does the law protect?

[dada21]

Here is the end game of all patent protection laws -- making the attorneys wealthy. Patents are a government granted monopoly. All government granted monopolies take advantage of their power over time -- and the big winners are the lawyers, of course.

Do you expect another result? Do you expect patents to make people innovate? We've been human for thousands of years, we've innovated for thousands of years. New products hit the market every day that were designed by some mom or some kid in a garage -- they didn't think of patents when they started designing.

The force of the law can not truly protect inventions, which is based on thought. Intellectual property is another word for "we want to control how you think and how you process a thought into an action." It seems criminal to me that I can't take a person's creation, make it better and sell the better version myself. This is how our lives get better -- innovating, modifying, perfecting, debugging. No idea is truly revolutionary, we just take little bits and pieces from what isn't working perfectly, and we find ways to make things better.

We elect lawyers to make laws, and in the end, the laws only protect the lawyers. We have accountants write tax code and in the end, the tax code only protects the accountants. This is what comes from excessive government force.

There are many people here who want patent laws to work -- I commend you for continuing to try to find a way to force other people to be good to one another. I have yet to hear HOW we can make patent protections work. We're humans, we're out for our own interests, and that will never change. Why would I want to give certain elected greedy humans this power?

Time for patent reform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,960,975.WKU.&OS=PN/6,960,975&RS =PN/6,960,975 [uspto.gov]

The New New Thing

[MarkEst1973]

IP Holding companies. I think we all know it's ridiculous, but so long as the law supports this kind of business I imagine we can expect to see more of the same.

Let's hope that the big companies calling for patent reform [com.com] manage to effect some positive change. Microsoft and Oracle in that article, I'm pretty sure IBM has sounded the call, too.

slashvertorial content is off

[Surt]

Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?

And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims. He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

There are many things wrong with the patent system. Patent holding companies are not among them. If you accept patents at all, licensing companies are vital to the success, fairness, and effectiveness of the system.

The Patent Claims

[putko]

FTFA:

"The two patents in question are not for inventions, but processes relating to using a regular telephone to make long distance calls. The patents focus on the use of a centralized database with pricing information for the purposes of determining the cheapest phone call carrier on the fly. The patents do not deal explicitly with the Internet, however, and do not even appear to have VoIP ventures in mind. (I thank my lucky stars every day that I'm not a patent lawyer, however, so my initial reading of the complaint could be incorrect.)"

In this case, Google may not be the best company to use. If the claims cover routing, then that is handled by a thing called the "internet", which uses some clever algorithms to dynamically route "packets" at the "lowest cost" (in a small-scale fashion). This "internet" doens't use a centralized database for this though, as their claim mentions.

too many lawyers, too much greed

[digitaldc]

You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services.
They have also been to court some 25 times, and in once instance Weinberger warned that a defendant had better be ready to spend at least US$1,000,000 on legal fees, because that's how they roll (paraphrased, of course).

This is what happens when you have too many lawyers, not enough clients, and an excessive amount of greed. People will find a way to sue for anything. It is not a question of who is right or wrong, it is more a question is who can quickly profit in this complex legal game. The US has more lawyers per capita than any other country in the world, and you can see the result. The lawyers win in the end since they will make huge fees and suffer little or no consequences from their actions.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[dada21]

The funny thing is, show me more than a handful of inventors who truly made it big from their inventions.

Most inventions are performed by hired staff in the research and development wing. There is nothing preventing companies from creating a "protect our inventions" wing, or figuring out how much the initial product must sell for to recoup the costs before competitors knock it off.

Define "whole brand new, reworked, better system" as I can't think of any, other than canning it entirely and replacing it with nothing.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[Chowderbags]

The majority of countries with high protections for IP have been well off for decades, if not hundreds of years. Do you think that if, say, the Congo instated US patent law in full force, that all the sudden they would become the patent producing capitol of the world? Ain't gonna happen.

Those countries which have time to invent in the first place also happen to have time to dick around with IP laws, and generally they aren't helpful to the little guy if the court case to protect his IP is going to end up costing him more than he'd get from licensing.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that all patents should be eliminated, cause that's no better than the above, but I also think that unless a company is actually producing (or trying to produce) a product with it's patent, they shouldn't get to sue someone. That would at least eliminate patent leeches on some level.

Re:Taste of their own medicine

[boinger]

Have they sued anyone over it?

There are plenty of people/companies with "defensive patents" simply to prevent a jackass from claiming it as their own.

Remember that Mercedes-Benz commercial re: airbags? "We've never enforced that patent." Like that.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[kryonD]

I'd agree with you here except for one minor little detail, RTI doesn't have a product that needs protecting. It's not like they filed the patent to ensure BigCorp wouldn't steal the idea and beat them to market. They are basically running an electronic protection racket that would make the Mafia proud. I mean seriously, the only thing Google will get from licensing their patent is protection from being sued. RTI doesn't make any money on their idea unless someone else needs to use it. It's straight up, clear cut extortion. I too am waiting to see Google take this one all the way to the Supreme Court.

Away with the Patent Squatters!

[Anonymous Coward]

We had the Blackberry fiasco, now Google Talk. Patent reform needs a use-it-or-lose-it approach among other things to clear away the scourge of patent squatting.

Patent lawyers are parasites

[pair-a-noyd]

This one is no different.
These people are too lazy and too immoral to earn an HONEST living so they leach off of the hard work of others. They are thieves and scum. Whale shit is a higher life form than these filthy parasites.

While I'm no fan of Google or it's mega-corporate adventures, I'm less of a fan of parasitical lawyers. Patent lawyers are bottom feeders and this guy is just one of many.

Patent lawyers should be classified as enemy combatants and hustled off to Gitmo in the middle of the night.

defensive patenting

[jilles]

It's stuff like this that makes the big software corporations invest in patents. Companies like google and microsoft don't draw significant revenue from patents and actually invest heavily in research. But having patents guarantees that they won't end up sueing each other. It's a defensive thing and it has gotten way out of hand. I work for a large european company that files lots of patents (Nokia) and we are very much into this thing. European patent law doesn't allow many of the patents we file in the US. Just recently we got sued by this small company from the US. Filing patents is our primary defence against this. Our money comes from selling phones, not intelectual property licensing.

With the US patent law and office deliberately (this was/is lobbied for) weakened to the point where basically any brain fart may be patent pending, people are patenting everything they can think of with absolute disrespect to such outdated things as prior art, originality or even cleverness. It doesn't matter if an idea is stupid, based on existing ideas and stolen: a patent gives you the right to sue. The legal process is guaranteed to be lengthy, complicated and above all very expensive. The patent office rubberstamping anything they stumble upon ensures a steady stream of revenue for a growing group of companies who, in all honestly, have never lifted a finger to do anything remotely resembling research. Their revenues are based on bullshit portfolios of patents. Google is just the latest victim. Luckily they have the muscle to fight back. Many truely innovative companies don't.

The rats of the IPR industry are becoming an obstacle for innovation. Large corporations are now starting to feel this pain (e.g. Google, IBM, Nokia and Microsoft have all recently had to deal with lawsuits from insignificant IPR only corporations). The problem with IPR only companies is that you can't countersue. In other words, your patent portfolio is worthless if you are sued by one of those companies. It is my hope that these companies will get smart and start lobbying against software patents instead of in favour like they have done in the past. Just today I joked to a colleague that Nokia should quit selling phones and focus on the Nokia Research Center I work for :-).

Re:sure, if by nowadays, you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent holding companies are just a way for in inventor to leverage his work to make money.

I know it's not exact but isn't this like a distant cousin of the RIAA and musicians?

Re:The New New Thing

[jmcharry]

If an individual invents and patents something, how else is he likely to be able to market and profit from his invention? He needs somebody with the resources to find and license companies that might want to use the invention and also to defend his claims, if necessary. Otherwise, patents are only of use to large companies to prevent startups from getting going. Most of them have extensive cross licensing agreements with other behemouths, so their main worry is some little guy inventing something they actually have to pay a bit for, and having the resources to make them comply.

That is not to defend the "085" patent. It looks to me like something Cable and Wireless, among others, was doing a couple decades ago. There might be something to reducing it to a device cheap enough for use on a single phone, but that looks like about all.

Re:slashvertorial content is off

[Zeveck]

Patent holding companies are indeed one of the key problems with the current patent system. Your suggestion is that just somebody thinking of an idea should be able to turn a profit. That is simply not the case - plenty of people *have ideas*, and were that the threshold for a patent then countless inventions could have been patented long ago. Hell, by that reasoning von Neumann could have patented the computer and then sold that patent to some parasitic holding company that just holds the patent and profits without ever producing anything. A patent it meant to protect the integrity of an invention, typically a product - not to make abstract ideas profitable in-and-of themselves.

Same thing is happening with RIM

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing is happening with RIM, they are being sued by NTP, a patent holding company with no real products or services.

Here's a good article from RIM's co-CEO explaining how broken the patent system is,

http://www.blackberrycool.com/2005/12/20/001213/ [blackberrycool.com]

Re:Seems like a difficult case for them...

[linuxtelephony]

Typical /. disclaimer: IANAL.

The first patent appears to have been filed in 1995, and reexamined and confirmed in 2001 with no updates. The second patent appears to have been filed in 1996, and reexamined and confirmed in 2002 with a few more claims added.

Short of an in depth review of both patents, there are three areas where I think Google will be able to defend. First, the patents are clearly for a dedicated device plugged into the calling station. The device is self-contained, and does all the decision making, ultimately dialing the routing codes for the desired carrier. The patent is for the use of a telephone calling station. And, the patent is for devices that use the telephone network.

While a computer can be argued to equal the "device" in the patent -- how the computer is used for Google Talk does not match how the device makes its decision for routing calls. And, a sound card with headset does not a calling station make. The computer would have to be considered both the device and the calling station for these to hold up. Finally, the internet would have to be considered "the" telephone network.

The language in these patents are targetted specifically, and narrowly, to the application of their end-point call routing device. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from these, or if Google will settle quietly.

Here's hoping Google fights.

Re:slashvertorial content is off

[Surt]

No, that's a problem with the patents being offered, not the holding companies. If the patent is for something that:

a) can easily be invented by someone else
b) can't be produced by the inventor

then something is wrong. That's why there's an obviousness clause, and there used to be a requirement to actually deliver an implementation.

Suppose we give credit to von neumann for inventing the computer, and grant him a patent on it. Suppose, further, for a moment that we feel he deserves the patent, and that the patent is completely valid, and that he has in fact built a computer.

Suppose he has not the resources to manufacture computers, and so sells his patent to a holding company. This allows one of 2 things to occur:

1) some other company steals his invention, and starts making computers. now since we agreed that the problem is not with the patent, by your theory, we shouldn't mind when a company steals inventions, and the holding company should not be able to look out for von neumann's interests, von neumann should get screwed.

2) the holding company can approach other companies, offering to sell them the rights to build computers, and thus transferring the rights to someone capable of mass manufacture. but maybe we should just all live without computers for another 17 years because holding companies are bad.

Patent != Invention

[arth1]

Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?

By counting "inventions" of a country with a patent system like the US, you're counting patented inventions, which isn't the same as useful inventions coming out of a system without the same patent protection. And in many cases, what's invented elsewhere is patented in the US -- that doesn't make it a US invention.
By presupposing that the number of patents reflects the number of inventions, and thus can be used as evidence that patents increase invention, you're begging the question. All you're proving is that availability of a patent system will increase the number of patents.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Who does the law protect?

[aaronl]

Yes, there's a correlation, but you're just missing a lot of things, both on the inventions, and on the reasons.

Some other factors that come to mind: greater population, stable governments, stable economies, safety, rising standards of living, rapid communication, rapid travel, etc. A few inventions enabled us to produce many many other inventions.

You also forget that inventions before used to be huge things, too. The wheel, fire starters, crop technique, medical basics, optics (glasses, microscope, telescope). There was also the development of math, science, medicine, etc.

I'd say we've had a pretty steady rate of invention to population over our history. Today, we have more population, so you have more inventions. Now we're seeing invention slow down, since it is extraordinarily difficult for a random person to have a quantum physics breakthrough, or design a new semiconductor. Just coming up with a possible new invention or discovery requires more resources and more knowledge than ever before.

When you add in the difficulty of actually marketing a product because of the patent/copyright minefield, it gets much worse. Now you have to be quite wealthy to afford the patent search, to fend off the leeches like NTP/SCO/RTI, and to fight with or license other patents that may actually be sensible. Most of the problem is a direct result of "intellectual property". When you had to patent a specific design for a device, it mean someone could get to the same result in a different way, without infringing. The crap that constitutes IP does not have specific designs. The patents are broad, often obvious, and never necessary when it comes to IP.

I think you will find that the advent of IP and IP protection slowed down development, and is going to result in a decline in innovation in the countries that fell into its trap.

Re:slashvertorial content is off

[AK Marc]

And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims.

So you are suggesting it is in the natural order of things for an inventor to invent something, patent it, then sell the patent to a company that has no intention of ever producing or using the patent for anything other than extortion? I know of no inventor who would like that idea. Every independent inventor I know would rather have no patent system than invent something and sell the rights to someone else knowing it would never be produced. Inventors are like artists. They don't do it because they want to, they do it because they have to. If you gave an artist the choice of putting up one of their best paintings in the Louvre or selling it to a private collector to be in storage forever, I think more would choose to get no income from giving it to the Louvre. The recognition and use of the art/invention is more important and greater incentive to create more than pure profit. Profit might motivate corporations to hire more people for the R&D department, but it doesn't seem to be the motivation for the independent artists and inventors I know.

If you are just talking about an inventor defending his patent, there are plenty of laywers out there willing to take the case, and they won't demand rights to the patent to do so. That is the recourse that inventors use, rather than just selling off their patents.

He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

What profits? They would be selling to a company guaranteed to not produce it. You'd have to be pretty stupid to make a deal based on profits when selling something to a company you know won't produce anything.

Re:Who does the law protect?

[bit01]

Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?

Standard, bogus argument from the PTO.

You're confusing correlation with causation. It could equally be that high innovation countries attract a patent mafia wanting to profit off of inventor's work. You have no evidence either way.

It could also be that patent laws and innovations develop independently but at the same time as a consequence of some other factor involving normal social progression. Again, you have no evidence.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

Re:Patent lawyers are parasites

[ajs]

That's totally unreasonable. Many patent lawyers are good people doing an honest (and hard) day's work. This is a different class of animal. These folks don't work for clients who invent things, they go into business for themselves in order to make money from the system without actually having contributed anything to the invention process.

Re:Same thing is happening with RIM

[symbolic]

Few contest that the U.S. patent system is overburdened. Only a few weeks ago, Patent and Trademark Commissioner John Doll was reported saying: "When you've got 1.3 million cases in the backlog, and it's taking [four to six] years to take a first office action, you've got to ask the question: Is the patent system still actually working, or are we just stamping numbers on the applications as they come through?

Funny - they brought a lot of this on themselves, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they had a bit of prodding from the inside, since it the revenue stream generated by patent filings is significant. They didn't HAVE to allow the first software patent, and the could have challenged patents that veered further and further into the murky gray area associated with software, but they didn't. As I recall, there were a couple of court decisions responsible for the interpretation that it was now OK to patent software, but this was never corrected. As a result, we are now chest-deep in the so-called "IP" cesspool that we have today.

Fixing the system now will be much more difficult, because there are many entrenched interests with a great deal at stake.

Re:Yawn... Nothing here, move along please.

[rainman_bc]

One of these days some Attorney General planning to run for Governor will wise up to this scam, and go after these firms for criminal extortion.

Generally though the Attoerney General is a lawyer and has many lawyer friends, probably some of which funded his campaign.

Beacuse the US has such an open system of corruption (which country doesn't though?), it's unlikely you'll ever see this business model done away with any time soon.

Re:reform the incorporation laws as well

[zogger]

No, personally I think it's been broken too severely and for too long a time period to be adequately fixed. I was just musing on a few of the potential fixes out there.

    I am in favor of a clean wipe and reinstall. You may parse that however you wish but I think you can get my drift there.

      I don't see it getting any better, any fairer, or any less corrupt with the system in place as we have it now. For all practical purposes we are living under a live ongoing coup situation, and there are too many entrenched order followers that will act according to orders rather than common sense and what is truly constitutional and allowed, to make any sort of realistic "within the system" changes possible. It hasn't happend yet since I have been watching, so I see no obvious reasons to think it will anytimte soon, either. it's just the odds, I run the odds, it's a dismal spread there based on past observable data. that's the best one can do, take data, analyse then erxtrapolate. That and the population has been totally scared-terrorized is the word- into accepting about anything they are told to do, and the mass media and public education systems are obvious propoganda arms of the established globalist fascists.

  We have a slide into a modern sort of Technofeudalism, and I think it sucks.

  We will not be able to "vote" any meaningful change, nor will these various public gang members or gangs ( I will not call them "parties" any longer, they are criminal gangs) willingly give up power or change to being honest.

I do not wish to have this opinion, really, but I hold it now based on all the anecdotal and observable data over the last several decades. I used to honestly believe working within the system had some decent hope, but I no longer have this viewpoint.

This is most generally speaking, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but for casual conversational purposes on a forum it's my viewpoint now. Any random individual or company may be totally honest and follow the letter of the laws and maintain a living and presence, but overall, no, I don't see our socio/economic/political "system" being any sort of long term ethical or practical or sustainable, and the really big over-all losers will be the honest middle class in this nation..

    I think we entered what will be known to future historians as the decline of the US approximately 10-15 years ago for most purposes, and it has accelerated greatly in the last 5 years, helped along immensely by police-state tech advances, and that is going to continue. When China is the posterboy model for modern business, and US business and political interests at the top levels are falling all over themselves to relocate the bulk of their business there, and cooperate with them, etc,well.. it says a lot to me about where these folks heads are at.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't hold to "cost" as the only criteria for "doing business", nor do I think that 'business' is the most important thing in life. Yes, I know, heresy! heh. This is not a popular opinion in capitalist circles, but..I am not a classic capitalist, so that won't apply to me either. Although it may work in a cost/profits sense to some degree, it doesn't work when it comes to human rights and other social tenets. Again, my POV. I am not a classic socialist either, but that's another discussion for another time. hth

Shouldn't this be illegal

[thegrassyknowl]

You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services. By all appearances, RTI is a company that was set up to collect licensing fees and pursue settlements related to the company's patent portfolio.

I personally think this should be illegal. These companies are preventing innovation becase they don't even have any real patents. There's a bunch of bullshit patents built on flimsy pretexes and containing mostly prior art.

Then they go around litigating to make their money. It's really tantamount to extortion/blackmail. They are trying to scare companies into paying them.

The companies that do innovate get dragged through the courts, which is a costly exercise (Microsoft and Google can really afford it). The smaller companies just say "fuck it" because they know they can't afford to be dragged through the legal system over something so pathetic. How can a system that was designed to encourage innovation and the free sharing of information be so perverse that it is now used to discourage innovation and extort money?

Of course, in the mean time the court system is tied up with companies defending against these bullshit claims. This costs Joe Taxpayer, when the money spent on the court could be better spent providing better health and education.

I say that if you own a patent and are not leveraging its claims in a product or service that you ACTUALLY SELL AS PART OF YOUR CORE BUSINESS OPRATION then your claim to enforce the patent should be invalid; that would stop pricks like these cunts from doing this shit.