In Canada, we've become super-sensitive to litigious patent holders given how NTP Inc. has being making life difficult for Research in Motion for the past four years. So, it's fascinating to see Rates Technology Inc. jump into the spotlight by suing Google for infringing on its VOIP patents. (Here's the lawsuit.)Like NTP, RTI is nothing more than a shell that holds patents and pursues licensing agreements. To be perfectly blunt, RTI is what NTP aspires to be when it grows up given RTI has agreements with more than 700 companies on a one-time, one-fee basis. In the patent world, once you bag a big prize (e.g. RIM), it's so much easier to convince other company's to enter into licenses. RTI's “hit list” features a who's who of the telecom world such as Lucent, Cisco, Nortel and Huawei. RTI's lawsuit activity has targeted Mitel Networks for $945-million and Alcatel for $1.15-billion. Rich Tehrani provides a lot of the juicy details about RTI following a conversation he had with RTI's Jerry Weinberg. If RIM's battle with NTP and RTI's licensing track record is any indication, Google would be wise to settle quickly to make RTI go away. From a bigger-picture perspective, do you think the activities and RTI and NTP will build momentum to look at how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues patents. In particular, it seems like there could be a backlash against the broad patents the USPTO grants, which have given many patent holder enormous legal clout because defendants have such a difficult time demonstrating they aren't infringing them. The key issue is whether these broad patents will deter innovation if patent “trolls” can easily solicit licensing fees out of companies developing new technology.
Update: The National Business Review has published a story on patent “trolling”, citing Rich Tehrani's interview.
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4 Comments
It's an interesting issue, Mark. If the founder of Rates developed least-cost routing in the 1970s (and I don't know whether he did or not) shouldn't he be entitled to patent that and then sue companies who don't want to license his technology? Should he be prevented from doing so just because he doesn't make anything? Thomas Edison didn't make very many things either, but he was still a great inventor with plenty of patents.
I'm not sure if I understand how “least cost routing” applies here.
To a lay person, neither patent seems relevant here. This definitely looks like a David fishing for some quick cash. I hope Google doesn't roll over.
Mark,
You are not a subscriber of Google Talk, I can see that. The service provides links only between computers. It does not involve any phone connection.
RTI legal crew does not have any technical background.
RTI's lawsuit has no merit.
Dorin
The idea of long copyrights and patents is an old royal-favor idea. This suggests immediately that the whole notion is dubious. Add to this, effective devaluation of possessed knowledge to zero (you paid what for your last google search?), add additionally that the whole idea of “knowledge work” arose in the context of the 1950's and 1960's (when information was hard to get at, among other things) and that things have Really Changed, and the whole IP conversation seems just a tad weird.