Google caught up voice services lawsuit

Rates Technology Inc has filed suit against Google for infringing on its VoIP patents. Damages from the suite could reach as high as $5B depending on how long litigation takes and how well the VoIP market does during that time.

Chicago patent attorney, Peter Zura has posted an interesting analysis of the actual IP claims of the patents in question. Some interesting background on RTI is revealed in an April 2005 posting by TMC's Rich Tehrani.

In short, this sort of smells like another classic IP case involving a company that provides no apparent value add to society in terms of goods and services, but rather, causes those that do add value to spend (or forfeit) inordinate amounts of resources protecting the businesses they have created.

Read the news article.