A four-pack of carriers is getting sued over the infringement of three 2007 patents that appear to center around the concept of picture caller ID -- but here's the best part, it's actually a different dude from a different company than the one
that sued Apple. US Cellular, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Helio are all named in the suit, suggesting that either the remainder of major US carriers have already licensed the technology, or this so-called Intellect Wireless just has a very bizarre way of choosing its defendants. So here's our question: what picture caller ID technology was patented by some random company in 2007 that these guys could possibly be violating?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jim @ Mar 6th 2008 11:52AM
Here's the patent:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7257210.PN.&OS=PN/7257210&RS=PN/7257210
Filed in 2005. But (and this is really important), it has priority back to at least October 1996, and potentially as far back as January 1994. So, something can only be prior art if it was public before October 1996.
Cory @ Mar 6th 2008 12:03PM
The patent covers actually transmitting the picture data along with the caller ID data, and it may be that those are the only carriers that do this. I know my phone (with AT&T) stores the pictures locally, and thus would not violate the patent.
Sam Winter @ Mar 6th 2008 5:19PM
yea thats weird. Seems like such a stupid way of accomplishing picture ID, other than maybe the caller could change the image thats pushed to the receiving phone whenever they wish.
Oh, and I guess this would work for callers not in the contact list of the receiving phone. Now it seems like a pretty good idea, although I don't know how this would work. The calling phone would have to send data out during every call? Or they would "register" an image and the carrier network would handle it? interesting...
gritz2m @ Mar 7th 2008 11:58AM
I have helio and the pictures for the caller ID are stored locally. Unless there is something I am missing in regards to my phone, its all stored locally.