Apple sued $360 million over iPhone Voicemail

Using someone else's technology to retrieve messages

5 December 2007 8:53 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Apple and AT&T have been slapped with a $360 million lawsuit over the iPhone's Visual Voicemail feature.

A company called Klausner Technologies has filed a patent lawsuit under its visual voicemail patents, claiming damages and future royalties estimated at $360 million although it has yet to go after Orange, T-Mobile and O2 in Europe.

The lawsuit claims that Apple's iPhone Visual Voicemail infringes Klausner Technologies' US Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818.

Namely that users can selectively get voice messages using the iPhone's inbox rather than having to go through each message sequentially.

The suit has been filed by the California law firm of Dovel & Luner in a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.

"We have litigated this patent successfully on two prior occasions", said Greg Dovel of Dovel & Luner, counsel for Klausner Technologies. "With the signing of each new licensee, we continue to receive further confirmation of the strength of our visual voicemail patents."

We will keep you posted.