I hope they bleed to death... The law firm representing them has taken the case on contingency.
2.) How can your company afford such an expensive legal action, given that you are not currently generating income? We are fortunate to have a contingency agreement with Aversion, Taylor, Mortensen & Sanders a top Nevada litigation firm.
Aversion Taylor Mortensen & Sanders will be supported by the following firms and attorneys.
- Knobbe Martens -- Leading IP law firm in the United States
- Smart & Bigarr -- Leading IP law firm in Canada
- Dr. Ryan Thomas, JD, PhD -- General Counsel for Voip-Pal
Our legal team has extensive experience in patent law and litigation, and has overseen the patent application process with the USPTO. We are extremely confident that our patents will be upheld.
I am ROTFLMAO! at the second law firm listed in the bullet points. . . "Smart & Bigarr", Really? . . . I don't think so. . . Looking at the patents in suit, I cannot see how they could apply at all against Apple.
- US 8,422,507 B2 -- "This invention relates to data communications and methods and apparatus for intercepting data communications, particularly voice over IP data communications, in an IP network. . . The term "lawful intercept" is used to describe a procedure which allows law enforcement agencies to perform electronic surveillance of telecommunications. Lawful intercept of telecommunications, particularly phone calls, is premised on a notion that a law enforcement agency has identified a person of interest, obtained a legal authorization for the surveillance (for example, a judicial or administrative warrant), and then contacted the person's telecommunications service provider that will be required to provide the law enforcement agency with a real-time copy of the person's communications." (Say what? Why would Apple be infringing a patent referencing the Lawful intercept of communications, when Apple is in trouble for NOT allowing law enforcement to intercept communications? - Swordmaker)
- US 9,143,608 -- "Methods and apparatus for intercepting communications in an Internet Protocol (IP) network involve maintaining dialing profiles for respective subscribers to the IP network, each dialing profile including a username associated with the corresponding subscriber, and associating intercept information with the dialing profile of a subscriber whose communications are to be monitored. Intercept information will include determination information for determining whether to intercept a communication involving the subscriber, and destination information identifying a device to which intercepted communications involving the subscriber are to be sent. When the determination information meets intercept criteria communications are established with a media relay through which communications involving the subscriber will be conducted or are being conducted to cause the media relay to send a copy of the communications involving the subscriber to a mediation device specified by the destination information." (Again, say what? A method of copying the messages and sending them to another location? Apple certainly is not involved in copying customer's communications and sending them elsewhere. - Swordmaker)
- US 9,179,005 B2 -- "This invention relates to voice over IP communications and methods and apparatus for routing and billing." (Apple is not involved with the routing and does not charge for the use of any VoIP use, so how can this be applied to Apple? - Swordmaker)
- US 9,137,385 B2 -- "A computer-implemented method for determining a time to permit a communication session to be conducted, the method comprising: causing at least one processor circuit to determine a cost per unit time value associated with the communication session; causing the at least one processor circuit to calculate a first time value as a sum of a free time attributed to a participant in the communication session and a quotient of a funds balance held by the participant divided by the cost per unit time value; and causing the at least one processor circuit to produce a second time value based on the first time value and a billing pattern associated with the participant, the billing pattern including first and second billing intervals and the second time value being the time to permit the communication session to be conducted." (So again, how is Apple, who does not bill its customers involved in determining the cost of the call or an appropriate time to make a VoIP call? - Swordmaker)
- US 8,774,378 B2 -- "Allocating charges for communications services -- A process and apparatus to facilitate communication between callers and calls in a system comprising a plurality of nodes with which callers and callees are associated is disclosed. In response to initiation of a call by a calling subscriber, a caller identifier and a callee identifier are received. Call classification criteria associated with the caller identifier are used to classify the call as a public network call or a private network call. A routing message identifying an address, on the private network, associated with the callee is produced when the call is classified as a private network call and a routing message identifying a gateway to the public network is produced when the call is classified as a public network call." (Once again, billing and charges. How is Apple involved? - Swordmaker)
- US 8,537,805 -- "This invention relates to emergency assistance calling, voice over internet protocol communications and methods and apparatus for emergency assistance calling for voice over IP data communications." (Again, Say WHAT? Identifying a 911 call from a mobile phone is handled completely differently than what this "invention" claims. It uses the built in GPS chip, a standards essential requirement, to send the location of the mobile device to the 911 operator. There is no need for special handling as claimed in this "invention." - Swordmaker)
- US 8,630,234 -- "Mobile Gateway - This invention relates generally to telecommunication, and more particularly to methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer readable media for initiating or enabling a call with a mobile telephone to a callee.
Mobile telephone service providers often charge significant fees for long distance telephone calls, particularly when the mobile telephone is roaming in another mobile telephone service provider's network. (This 2009 filed invention seems to solve a problem that no longer existed. Has anyone here been charged after 2009, a long-distance call from a Cellular phone, especially using VoIP???? - Swordmaker)
- US 8,675,566 -- "Uninterrupted transmission of internet protocol transmissions during endpoint changes" (This has to do with the maintaining a connection between two devices in communications. It does not seem to have anything at all to do with the devices themselves. It's all about the connection BETWEEN, the carrier's responsibility. Now, again, what has this to do with Apple's devices, and the standards required connection patents necessary for them to work with the carriers' networks? - Swordmaker)
- US 9,154,417 -- "Uninterrupted transmission of internet protocol transmissions during endpoint changes - A method and apparatus providing uninterrupted transmission of IP transmissions, during endpoint changes is disclosed. If a destination identifier in a received IP transmission matches a caller identifier of a record and a source address identifier or source identifier in the transmission do not match a caller address identifier or the caller identifier of the record, and a session identifier in the transmission matches a caller session identifier in the record, the source address identifier and the source identifier in the transmission are set as the caller address identifier and caller identifier respectively of the record. A similar procedure is followed to set the callee address identifier and callee identifier of the record using similar fields associated with the callee. (See what I said in #8, and just rinse and repeat! - Swordmaker)
The rest of the list of patents they are asserting as part of their suite of patents are merely pending, and are more of the same. There are literally hundreds of patents and methods of accomplishing the same things, yet these bozos claim their patents must be being used by Apple, Verizon, and AT&T, not to mention, they go on to claim, Android, Blackberry and Windows, which when added to the iOS phones they are suing about now, they are entitled to a 1.25% claim on the profits of every device sold because they all are using VoIP as part of making cellular phone calls and that over 4.35 billion wireless devices have been sold! They are putting all device makers and carriers on notice they will be coming after them when they win these suits against Apple, Verizon and AT&T.
They are delusional if they think these patents infringement suits are winnable. There is a very good reason they are NOT making any money with them now. No one finds anything monetizeable about any of them. VoIP-PAL should get a clue about things in that they have several patents covering the exact same thing. If they can invent two approaches to fix the same problem, then others have also invented other means to do it, and patented their fixes too.
Everything about their patents is either obvious, or prior art, or being done by another method that does not involve VoIP-PAL's method, or VoIP-PAL's invention solves a problem that simply doesn't exist any more, such as the one to avoid long distance telephone charges!