Jun 17

Apple vs Klausner

If Steve Jobs had to worry about each Apple went through, that surely explains its frail appearance. Obviously, this makes no sense, because if we look back at all those complaints filed by Apple or against it, Jobs would have disappeared until now and, after all, that's why Apple has its own lawyers - to deal with problems... or create them. Now, it's Klausner Technology, a company saying that Apple, eBay and AT&T have an agreement regarding its patents on "visual voicemail" technology, and so we have another legal fight starting up...

Klausner vs Apple and others

The whole deal is rather complicated, because Klausner Technologies filed a patent lawsuit under its visual voicemail patents against Apple and others last year, claiming that Apple’s iPhone Visual Voicemail infringes Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818. The tricky part is that these patents were already licensed to other companies providing visual voicemail, including AOL, Vonage Holdings, and many others.

Even better(or worse, depends how you look at it), Klausner Technologies claimed that Apple's Newton was covered under an OEM patent license granted by Judah Klausner, the company's founder, over 20 years ago, under his landmark US Patent 4,117,542.

So...what next? I have no idea, to be honest, but I guess they will settle things off-court. What do you think?