Klausner Technologies has settled a patent-infringement lawsuit it filed late last year against Apple and codefendant AT&T. “A settlement was reached with both Apple and AT&T, and a license was granted to them,” said company founder Judah Klausner.
Klausner Technologies, which owns U.S. and international patents covering visual voice-mail products and services, asserted last December that Apple’s iPhone — together with other services offered by AT&T — had infringed on two Klausner patents dating from 1994 and 1996. Both patents cover designs pertaining to telephone answering devices that link the displayed data with recorded audio messages.
Earlier this year, the company announced it had reached a licensing deal with GotVoice — another of the lawsuit’s codefendants.
“We are happy to add GotVoice to our growing list of licensees,” Klausner said. “GotVoice’s visual voice mail is an excellent example of our patented visual voice-messaging technology, letting consumers view and select voice messages in a similar fashion to the way they view and select e-mails.”
Visual Voice Mail
The disputed technology empowers a popular feature offered by the iPhone’s revolutionary user interface. Called visual voice mail, it enables iPhone users to access a list of all incoming voice messages in an e-mail-like display format. Users then have the option of designating the precise order in which they wish to play back their voice-mail messages.
Klausner Technologies said the iPhone’s design infringed on the company’s intellectual-property rights by allowing handset users to selectively retrieve voice messages via the iPhone’s inbox display.
“Apple has called iPhone’s visual voice mail ‘one of the greatest advances in the history of mankind . . . without question,'” Klausner Technologies said when it filed the lawsuit, which sought $360 million in damages and future royalties.
Now that an agreement has been reached, however, Klausner is refraining from the…