Hot New Service Meets Hot New Lawsuit

On March 11, 2009 Google launched its much anticipated new service, Google Voice. This service provides people with a number they choose that can act as a central hub for all the numbers the person has, all for free.

Inbound calls to this number are forwarded to all of the other phones a person may have, depending on the preferences they have set up. For instance, it can be set up so a call placed to the Google number is not routed to a home phone line during certain hours of the day, say in the evening during dinner.

With roughly 1 million people already signed up with Google Voice accounts, it’s clear this is a popular service with the masses. Well not so much with the people at Frontier Communications Corporation, who recently filed a lawsuit to block Google’s “one number” feature, according to Reuters.com.

Frontier, a company that did $2.12 billion in 2009 sales, claims that Google’s Voice system is their intellectual property, and U.S. patent 7,742,468 proves it. The patent, filed on September 1, 2009, titled Systems and Methods for Providing Enhanced Telephone Services, Frontier claims is deliberately infringed upon by Google and the Google Voice service.

Google naturally has denied these accusations saying, “we believe these claims are entirely without merit, and we’ll defend against them vigorously,” in an e-mail statement made by Andrew Peterson, spokesman for Google.

Patrick Kelly is an expert writer based in San Diego, California.  He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.