Apple Sued For $360 Million Over Iphone'

[XGhozt 410]

Apple Sued For $360 Million Over iPhone's Voicemail

 

Klausner Technologies seeks to milk money out of Apple, and in a seperate suit out of Comcast, Cablevision Systems, and eBay's Skype

 

What is lauded by many users as one of the iPhone's hottest features has just landed the electronics giant in some hot legal waters.

 

TIME magazine's invention of the year, just landed one of the bigger patent infringement suits of the year. Klausner Technologies has filed suit against Apple claiming the giant infringed on its patent for visual voicemail, and is seeking $360M in compensation and damages.

 

Klausner holds U.S. patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818. The patents basically describe a system that allows for visual retrieval and sorting of voicemail via a display. The patents certainly sound like they would cover any visual voicemail setup, which likely is making Apple pretty nervous.

 

The plaintiff cites Apple's states that visual voicemail is "one of the greatest advances in the history of mankind ... without question" and yet is shorting the inventor on royalties.

 

Various other companies have already paid Klausner Technologies to license these patents, including Time Warner's AOL, which features the technology in its AOL Voicemail service. Vonage also pays to use the technology in its Voicemail Plus service.

 

Apple and AT&T refused to make immediate comments on the lawsuit.

 

The suit was filed by California law firm of Dovel & Luner in a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. Klausner also attacked Comcast's Digital Voice Voicemail, Cablevision Systems' Optimum Voicemail, and Ebay's Skype, filing a separate lawsuit in the same court, on the same day. The second suit cites infringement on the same patents and seeks from the group of infringers a barely lighter $300M.

 

Klausner Technologies is an avid patent seeker, and was founded by Judah Klausner who invented and patented the PDA and electronic organizer. Judah owns the legendary U.S. patent 4,117,542 which covers these devices. He licensed his PDA patent under an OEM license to Apple so that Apple could develop its Newton PDA, which became the archetype for many PDAs to come. Klausner's new company has oft been compared to licenser NTP for its aggressive patent mongering -- though in Klausner's defense, he has singularly come up with a large portion of the ideas.

 

Now Apple, who once enjoyed happy times with Klausner celebrating Newtons in the 90s, faces its former friend as an enemy in court. Unfortunately for Apple, Klausner is just one legal enemy of its much maligned iPhone. Apple is facing class action suits for its iBricking and "monopolistic behavior", suits over the iPhones battery, an environmental lawsuit from activist organization Greenpeace, and complaints of iFires.

 

Hopefully Apple's astronomical iPhone sales and energetic growth can keep pace with its mounting legal bills.

 

Source: http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Sued+For+36...article9895.htm

[Azqato 503]

HAHAHAHA

owned.

[FlyingArmyMan! 40]

Take that Apple.

[Suteki 114]

I don't have an IPhone or anything, but why do you guys hate Apple so?

[ViperSRT3g 224]

iTunes, iPhones and iPods must die. They are trying to take over the world O_O hence, iRobots. AAHH!

[Kenshyn 638]

How do you like them apples?

Couldn't think of anything better.

Fail.

 

 

 

 

 

ITunes is gay.

IPods are cool!

My friend has an IPhone.....it's kinda gay. :/

[Cripp 167]

Half of the shit that apple makes is gay. Most successful was the damn ipod.

[Zander 85]

yeah, you cant even call them a computer company any more...

[Speedskater 167]

People think, OMFG IT HAS AND I before the word that must mean its better then anything else

[XGhozt 410]

People think, OMFG IT HAS AND I before the word that must mean its better then anything else

When ever I see an i in front of a product I think, "oh shit, did apple ruin it already"? :tease:

[ViperSRT3g 224]

lol @ iMacs XD

[Ruler of War 169]

in the words of a CSS video "BOOM HEAD SHOT" anyways... thats a fucking owned on apple's end.... and man the guy thats going to win is going to need a bulldozer for all that cash....

[Zar 696]

LOL that sucks for Apple!

[FlyingArmyMan! 40]

When doesn't it suck for Apple?

[Renegade Angel 1]

People think, OMFG IT HAS AND I before the word that must mean its better then anything else

When ever I see an i in front of a product I think, "oh shit, did apple ruin it already"? :tease:

LMFAO OWned.

And yea i think almost the same.

 

I think apple computers blow...

They have never made anything good until ipod.

But even that gets owned. lmfao

like now =D

[Zar 696]

Well I hope that this lawsuit goes through and apple gets screwed. I so wouldn't doubt it that they took someones idea and tried to pass it off as their own invention.