Google Tries To Patent Least Cost Routing?

from the er...-that's-old dept

First off, we should point out that there's a tendency in the press to discover a patent app (or even a granted patent) from a company and immediately write up an article claiming that the company is planning to implement what's in said patent -- as if the patent gives a glimpse into that company's future plans. The truth is that plenty of companies patent stuff that never amount to anything. So, reading the tea leaves via patent application is unlikely to be very accurate. So, it's difficult to put much weight into the claims from Wired that Google is planning to "kill off cellphone contracts" based on a recently revealed patent application on a flexible communications system, that would effectively bid out to various telco providers for the best possible rate before initiating a connection.

The real question shouldn't be about whether or not this will kill off mobile contracts, but why anyone should think this is patentable material. Least cost routing techniques have been around for ages, and you could buy a fax machine that would do it automatically for you years ago (I think I bought mine at least five years ago). It's hard to see what's all that different here, other than that it would be for data instead of voice or fax (which are really data in their own way) and that it could include mobile lines or alternative broadband options like WiFi. But that hardly seems worthy of a patent. Even odder? Google was sued about three years ago for apparently infringing on a least cost routing patent held by RTI, a patent holding company that recently had its tactics exposed.

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Exposing The Patent Troll Playbook... And How To (Almost) Beat It

from the this-is-innovation? dept

We've written about patent hoarding firm RTI before, back when it sued Google. At the time, we pointed to Rich Tehrani's fantastic article about the company and how it was basically one guy who claimed his rather narrow patents covered pretty much everything having to do with VoIP. Pretty much any company of any substantial size that had anything to do with VoIP had been on the receiving end of threats and/or lawsuits from RTI.

Now, Joe Mullin points us to an absolutely fantastic description from the CEO of Fonality exposing RTI's patent badgering techniques -- and how Fonality fought back and (almost) won. The "almost" part is the sad part. In the end, they still paid the guy a little bit of money, though it was significantly less than what he had been asking for (and what he had sued them for). And, tragically, this plays into RTI's game plan as well -- as part of his initial pitch is sending over a list of all the other companies who have settled over these patents, which makes plenty of companies feel that since those other companies "settled" then it wasn't worth fighting and they might as well settle too. This is unfortunate.

But at least the post describes how to push back on his various claims. Here's a short excerpt, but it's worth reading the whole thing:

It was then that Jimmy enacted the second part of the classic troll playbook. Peer pressure. Jimmy started to list (and provide documentation to support) literally hundreds of other "big" companies that had already settled with him over this same patent. Heck, it seemed like everyone from AT&T to Cisco was on this list. A sustained bout of queasiness settled over me. Yikes, if they couldn't beat this guy, what chance did I have? He even told us how he had sued the mighty Google for $5B!...

But, then a funny thing happened. When we asked him *how* much he had settled for, he wouldn't tell us. Nor did asking "the Google" (you know, that series of interconnected pipes) help us much. There just seemed to be a dearth of information on either settlement amounts or terms. Did they settle for a million dollars? A billion? A free iPod? An agreement not to mention that they settled for zero? Well, heck, if nobody was writing about it, and Jimmy wasn't boasting about it, it probably wasn't much to boast about anyway. So, when my lawyers called and asked us if we were ready to settle, I did what every strong leader does in a moment of crisis. I put the call on speakerphone, crawled under my desk, and cowered with hands over head. It was from that towering position of omniscience that I gave the proud warrior cry to "fight on!"

Hopefully more folks will start exposing some of the sneakier tactics used in patent infringement lawsuits -- and how to fight back as well.

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