10 ms·

Meta ordered to pay $175M for infringing on two patents held by Voxer Inc

172 points by grej 4y ago

paulgb 4y ago
This appears to be the complaint https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/22/voxer_complaint_1_july_2020.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/22/voxer_complaint_1_july_202...
egberts1 4y ago
What a great win. When being interviewed with Facebook (or anyone else for that matter) about your product, always impose and enforce a non-disclosures agreement (NDA). I am not a lawyer but damn, … this is basic business law.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  odd take, people and organizations that get a lot of deal flow wont bother with you if you put those kind of barriers in place, 99 out of 100 times your idea and proposal is junk this jury result is based on a finding of patent infringement
  - egberts1 4y ago
    Right. My bad.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Unfortunately nobody savvy is going to sign that NDA. You have to either a) not tell them anything useful or b) accept the risk.
  - egberts1 4y ago
    What a great time to be an entrepreneur trying to crack the angel market.
datavirtue 4y ago
Seems like they should have settled this right away. I predict the reward will be increased through further litigation.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Based on what? Are you aware of the relationship between texas and patent trolls?
whimsicalism 4y ago
Seems unlikely to me that Facebook Live based their development on this Walkie Talkie app and reading the complaint [0] many of the patents seem excessively broad. Both streaming and storing a live video transmission can be patented? I suspect that military veterans get extra deference by Texas juries. [0]: https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537.1.0.pdf https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...
- bena 4y ago
  Yeah, I was reading through the complaint, started looking through the patents, and unless I'm missing something, this seems more patent-trolly than any sort of legitimate complaint. The complaint itself makes Voxer seem a little red-flaggy itself. Why Voxer created the application is immaterial to whether or not Meta infringed on their patents. The fact they won "Best New App 2013" from "Random bullshit SV award mill" is also immaterial. The "Silicon Valley Business App Awards" themselves call themselves an advertising company. It's an award you buy to say you won an award. And from the patents I've looked over, it seems they're trying to patent the overall concept of chunking the data. Is that right? Am I missing something? I've seen nothing specific. No implementation.
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    don't..blame the player? I agree this is not constructive, hinders progress, and just invites this kind of decadent courtroom posturing. but thats the game that is playing, right? I have some of these nonsense patents myself. I sort of had to go along as a condition of my employment
    - bena 4y ago
      If they held the patent defensively, that would be one thing. But this is not that. They are suing Meta for damages. That doesn't happen unless Voxer brings it to court. It's not like Voxer wrote the patents, sold them off, then is getting money because TrollCo is suing Meta for infringement of those patents. No, Voxer is suing. We can completely blame them if they are suing based on shit patents.
yieldcrv 4y ago
So we like this one because the patent holder made their own product as well? or do we still just not like software patents or do we like that there is a (read: any) remedy for this person having their idea and product copied or do we just not like Meta and their tactics
- ghusto 4y ago
  Here, let me help: 1. "Facebook approached Voxer about a potential collaboration that led to Voxer sharing its patents and proprietary information with the company" 2. Facebook then said 'naaaaah' 3. Facebook then copied some of the technologies he'd shown them to both Facebook and Instagram The conclusion most people would draw is that Facebook is a piece of shit. Does that clarify things? Or would you like to keep suggesting that people here have double standards regarding software patents?
  - protomyth 4y ago
    You missed the "Facebook revoked Voxer’s access to key components of the Facebook platform". That isn't a good look when you exclude the competition even if you own the platform. Ask Microsoft how well that works in court.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      Its not an antitrust lawsuit its a patent infringement lawsuit in fact its the exact opposite of an antitrust lawsuit since patents themselves are a 20 year state-sanctioned monopoly
      - protomyth 4y ago
        Actions taken against a party factor into any lawsuit.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    The question is whether you would hold the same opinion if the patent holder never made their own app at all Because since this is a patent lawsuit the existence of a video technology patent is all that matters Not the ways facebook did grimy actions This isnt fundamentally different than other software patent litigation threads, so yes I am suggesting a double standard and am here to confirm it
gamblor956 4y ago
"The Texas jury" This was another one of those fraudulent patent cases from the patent rocket docket in Texas. Expect the award to be overturned. It's very likely the underlying patents will be thrown out at the appellate level as they cover a number of things that are not patentable. (In a nutshell, doing something and adding "on a computer" does not make it patentable, but that is precisely what the underlying patents in this case try to claim.)
- runjake 4y ago
  This is a federal case in Austin. I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing (Eastern District).
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The Eastern TX patent trolling should not be a thing anymore due to this Supreme Court ruling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Foods_Group_Brands_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...
    - runjake 4y ago
      This is good to know. Thanks.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
      “Filings in the district of Delaware have increased.” The situation in East Texas sucked, but how is that better than the fact that the State of Delaware is the nations de fact merchant court?
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I do not agree that the state of Delaware is the nation’s de facto merchant court, but even if true, in this case it would be because businesses choose to incorporate there, which is a legal right in the US. If I recall correctly, the reason patent trolls used East Texas is because a judge there has sons that have law firms and coincidentally come up with favorable patent rulings. There is a completely different reason to use Delaware, explained in the linked Wikipedia source. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/patent_lawsuits_drop_21_percent_in_the_eastern_district_of_texas_as_scotus https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/patent_lawsuits_drop... >The ruling said the word “resides” requires suits filed under that prong of the statute to be filed in the state where the company is incorporated. The patent law also allows businesses to file patent suits in a district where a company being sued has a regular and established place of business. >In the first half of 2017, patent lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas dropped 21.3 percent from the same period last year, according to data from Lex Machina cited by Texas Lawbook. In the same period, patent cases in the District of Delaware, where many companies are incorporated, jumped 71 percent.
mmastrac 4y ago
This headline is terrible... it's not that Meta "copied a veteran's app", more like Meta infringed on patents held by Voxer, a veteran-founded company.
- choppaface 4y ago
  Yes but the moderation here is very pro big company. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855747 The title was not edited until long after the article fell off the front page despite the thread’s substantial push-back and the GCloud employee sending a request to HN mods. Titles on HN are a reflection of the HN mods personal and financial incentives. Just like any spammy news site, don’t take what YC posts as gospel. (Even if pg has written a gospel …)
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Voxer is also well-known enough, at least a decade ago, to be mentioned in the headline. I remember having it for some reason, probably because people I know actually used it in that early era of smartphones.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
I'm happy when anything bad happen to Meta, but why does it matter than the app is from a Green Beret veteran?
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  The article is from militarytimes.com
- mywittyname 4y ago
  The "veteran-owned company" angle might be the reason Voxer won the lawsuit. They requested a jury trial for a patent infringement lawsuit in Texas, that's not a decision one makes if they are wanting a ruling purely on the techical merits of the case. It should be interesting to see what happens during the appeal.
- shitpostbot 4y ago
w0mbat 4y ago
There would seem to be a lot of prior art that could be invoked to challenge these patents. For example, my friend Andrew Green released a Mac app he wrote called "NetPhone" in 1995. This is so long ago that the app had to worry about squeezing the traffic out over dialup to get to the internet. source: http://baby.indstate.edu/CU-SeeMe/devl_archives/feb_95/0299.html http://baby.indstate.edu/CU-SeeMe/devl_archives/feb_95/0299....
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
yuzuquat 4y ago
if I'm not mistaken, the gist of the patent (10511557) seems to be 1) video playback can be switched between "live" and "vod" 2) a playback system (MCMS) that renders 1 or more streams and automatically prioritizes which streams to watch? 2) video streams can be persisted to device 3) video streaming reduces in quality during poor network conditions I can't think of any live stream app that doesn't do anything similar (youtube live immediately comes to mind). It does seem like the patent was applied for in 2007, but seeing something like makes me think anything anyone builds now is bound to be sued eventually.
- neon_electro 4y ago
  How is justin.tv being started in 2007 [0] not prior art given the timing? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dejw 4y ago
Another possible scenario is that when facebook saw how basic Voxel is they quit the collab.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SeanLuke 4y ago
Meta paying $175M would produce much needed schadenfreude. However it's worth mentioning that this case appeared before the notoriously patent-troll-friendly Judge Alan D. Albright. The man actually openly encouraged patent owners to appear before him, and senators have asked the Supreme Court to reprimand him (the Chief Justice has since criticized him). The Albright situation is so bad that the Western District recently had to introduce a forced case randomization in order to keep plaintiffs from shopping for him. I'd say the chance this was overturned on appeal would be high. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txwdce/1:2020cv00655/1099537/54/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/t...
- dgs_sgd 4y ago
  Can someone who knows about US law explain why it's easier to change procedure and introduce case randomization than to simply sack the judge for handling cases in an obviously biased way?
  - lolinder 4y ago
    I'm far from an expert, but on a cursory search it looks like federal judges can only be removed by congressional impeachment, which would be extremely hard to pull off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Tenure_and_salary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Te...
  - antasvara 4y ago
    AFAIK, judges can't be "fired" in the traditional sense. If they are going to be removed, they need Congress to impeach the judge in question. As we saw with the Trump impeachment, getting a 2/3 vote in the Senate is exceedingly difficult.
  - hollerith 4y ago
    I am not a lawyer, but am a US citizen. A central design goal of the US system is to prevent any one person or group from getting too much power. Judges in particular were seen by the Founders as an important check on the power of the legislative and executive branches of government, so those 2 branches probably simply do not have the power to remove the judge. Other judges, perhaps on the Supreme Court, might have the power to remove the judge, but only for breaches of ethical standards.
googlryas 4y ago
I'd love to know what kind of patents someone developing a walkie talkie app can get. Unfortunately, despite being a software engineer for 20+ years, I have no ability to actually decipher what is actually present in patent applications.
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
> The Texas jury found that Facebook Live and Instagram Live incorporated two pieces of Voxer’s technologies that involve streaming media over networks I don't feel sorry for FB at all, but patents for streaming data over a network seems nonsensical, at best. I just picked out a random patent from the lawsuit (https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537.1.0.pdf https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...), and the claims are so dumb. Patent (https://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=10142270.PN.&OS=PN/10142270&RS=PN/10142270 https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...): > Users are empowered to conduct communications in either: (i) a near-synchronous or "live" conversation, providing a user experience similar to a standard full duplex phone call; or (ii) in a series of back and forth time-delayed transmissions (i.e., time-shifted mode). Further, users engaged in a conversation can seamlessly transition from the live mode to the time-shifted mode and back again. This attribute also makes it possible for users to engage in multiple conversations, at the same time, by prioritizing and shifting between the two modes for each conversation. Two individuals using the system can therefore send recorded voice messages back and forth to each other and review the messages when convenient, or the messages can be sent at a rate where they essentially merge into a live, synchronous voice conversation. Hmmm... this sounds familiar... (stripping away all the nonsense patent language). So people can send voice messages or text messages, or both, or call. Wow, such innovation. > This new form of communication, for the purposes of the present application, is referred to as "Voxing." Thank god this never caught on.
wfbarks 4y ago
WTOI - Walkie Talkies on Internet
- guessbest 4y ago
  I think it is Radio over IP since a handie talkie is just a transceiver broadcasting a signal in half-duplex. I think a handie talkie may be even simpler in that it is broadcasting simplex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_communication Radio over IP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP
suyash 4y ago
Amount is missing a few zeros no? Should have been worth more.

172 points by grej 4y ago

This appears to be the complaint https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/22/voxer_complaint_1_july_2020.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/22/voxer_complaint_1_july_202...

egberts1 4y ago

What a great win. When being interviewed with Facebook (or anyone else for that matter) about your product, always impose and enforce a non-disclosures agreement (NDA). I am not a lawyer but damn, … this is basic business law.

yieldcrv 4y ago
odd take, people and organizations that get a lot of deal flow wont bother with you if you put those kind of barriers in place, 99 out of 100 times your idea and proposal is junk this jury result is based on a finding of patent infringement
- egberts1 4y ago
  Right. My bad.
dboreham 4y ago
Unfortunately nobody savvy is going to sign that NDA. You have to either a) not tell them anything useful or b) accept the risk.
- egberts1 4y ago
  What a great time to be an entrepreneur trying to crack the angel market.

datavirtue 4y ago

Seems like they should have settled this right away. I predict the reward will be increased through further litigation.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Based on what? Are you aware of the relationship between texas and patent trolls?

whimsicalism 4y ago

Seems unlikely to me that Facebook Live based their development on this Walkie Talkie app and reading the complaint [0] many of the patents seem excessively broad. Both streaming and storing a live video transmission can be patented? I suspect that military veterans get extra deference by Texas juries. [0]: https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537.1.0.pdf https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...

bena 4y ago
Yeah, I was reading through the complaint, started looking through the patents, and unless I'm missing something, this seems more patent-trolly than any sort of legitimate complaint. The complaint itself makes Voxer seem a little red-flaggy itself. Why Voxer created the application is immaterial to whether or not Meta infringed on their patents. The fact they won "Best New App 2013" from "Random bullshit SV award mill" is also immaterial. The "Silicon Valley Business App Awards" themselves call themselves an advertising company. It's an award you buy to say you won an award. And from the patents I've looked over, it seems they're trying to patent the overall concept of chunking the data. Is that right? Am I missing something? I've seen nothing specific. No implementation.
- convolvatron 4y ago
  don't..blame the player? I agree this is not constructive, hinders progress, and just invites this kind of decadent courtroom posturing. but thats the game that is playing, right? I have some of these nonsense patents myself. I sort of had to go along as a condition of my employment
  - bena 4y ago
    If they held the patent defensively, that would be one thing. But this is not that. They are suing Meta for damages. That doesn't happen unless Voxer brings it to court. It's not like Voxer wrote the patents, sold them off, then is getting money because TrollCo is suing Meta for infringement of those patents. No, Voxer is suing. We can completely blame them if they are suing based on shit patents.

yieldcrv 4y ago

So we like this one because the patent holder made their own product as well? or do we still just not like software patents or do we like that there is a (read: any) remedy for this person having their idea and product copied or do we just not like Meta and their tactics

ghusto 4y ago
Here, let me help: 1. "Facebook approached Voxer about a potential collaboration that led to Voxer sharing its patents and proprietary information with the company" 2. Facebook then said 'naaaaah' 3. Facebook then copied some of the technologies he'd shown them to both Facebook and Instagram The conclusion most people would draw is that Facebook is a piece of shit. Does that clarify things? Or would you like to keep suggesting that people here have double standards regarding software patents?
- protomyth 4y ago
  You missed the "Facebook revoked Voxer’s access to key components of the Facebook platform". That isn't a good look when you exclude the competition even if you own the platform. Ask Microsoft how well that works in court.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    Its not an antitrust lawsuit its a patent infringement lawsuit in fact its the exact opposite of an antitrust lawsuit since patents themselves are a 20 year state-sanctioned monopoly
    - protomyth 4y ago
      Actions taken against a party factor into any lawsuit.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  The question is whether you would hold the same opinion if the patent holder never made their own app at all Because since this is a patent lawsuit the existence of a video technology patent is all that matters Not the ways facebook did grimy actions This isnt fundamentally different than other software patent litigation threads, so yes I am suggesting a double standard and am here to confirm it

gamblor956 4y ago

"The Texas jury" This was another one of those fraudulent patent cases from the patent rocket docket in Texas. Expect the award to be overturned. It's very likely the underlying patents will be thrown out at the appellate level as they cover a number of things that are not patentable. (In a nutshell, doing something and adding "on a computer" does not make it patentable, but that is precisely what the underlying patents in this case try to claim.)

runjake 4y ago
This is a federal case in Austin. I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing (Eastern District).
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  The Eastern TX patent trolling should not be a thing anymore due to this Supreme Court ruling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Foods_Group_Brands_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...
  - runjake 4y ago
    This is good to know. Thanks.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    “Filings in the district of Delaware have increased.” The situation in East Texas sucked, but how is that better than the fact that the State of Delaware is the nations de fact merchant court?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not agree that the state of Delaware is the nation’s de facto merchant court, but even if true, in this case it would be because businesses choose to incorporate there, which is a legal right in the US. If I recall correctly, the reason patent trolls used East Texas is because a judge there has sons that have law firms and coincidentally come up with favorable patent rulings. There is a completely different reason to use Delaware, explained in the linked Wikipedia source. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/patent_lawsuits_drop_21_percent_in_the_eastern_district_of_texas_as_scotus https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/patent_lawsuits_drop... >The ruling said the word “resides” requires suits filed under that prong of the statute to be filed in the state where the company is incorporated. The patent law also allows businesses to file patent suits in a district where a company being sued has a regular and established place of business. >In the first half of 2017, patent lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas dropped 21.3 percent from the same period last year, according to data from Lex Machina cited by Texas Lawbook. In the same period, patent cases in the District of Delaware, where many companies are incorporated, jumped 71 percent.

mmastrac 4y ago

This headline is terrible... it's not that Meta "copied a veteran's app", more like Meta infringed on patents held by Voxer, a veteran-founded company.

choppaface 4y ago
Yes but the moderation here is very pro big company. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855747 The title was not edited until long after the article fell off the front page despite the thread’s substantial push-back and the GCloud employee sending a request to HN mods. Titles on HN are a reflection of the HN mods personal and financial incentives. Just like any spammy news site, don’t take what YC posts as gospel. (Even if pg has written a gospel …)
Apocryphon 4y ago
Voxer is also well-known enough, at least a decade ago, to be mentioned in the headline. I remember having it for some reason, probably because people I know actually used it in that early era of smartphones.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

I'm happy when anything bad happen to Meta, but why does it matter than the app is from a Green Beret veteran?

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
The article is from militarytimes.com
mywittyname 4y ago
The "veteran-owned company" angle might be the reason Voxer won the lawsuit. They requested a jury trial for a patent infringement lawsuit in Texas, that's not a decision one makes if they are wanting a ruling purely on the techical merits of the case. It should be interesting to see what happens during the appeal.
shitpostbot 4y ago

w0mbat 4y ago

There would seem to be a lot of prior art that could be invoked to challenge these patents. For example, my friend Andrew Green released a Mac app he wrote called "NetPhone" in 1995. This is so long ago that the app had to worry about squeezing the traffic out over dialup to get to the internet. source: http://baby.indstate.edu/CU-SeeMe/devl_archives/feb_95/0299.html http://baby.indstate.edu/CU-SeeMe/devl_archives/feb_95/0299....

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

yuzuquat 4y ago

if I'm not mistaken, the gist of the patent (10511557) seems to be 1) video playback can be switched between "live" and "vod" 2) a playback system (MCMS) that renders 1 or more streams and automatically prioritizes which streams to watch? 2) video streams can be persisted to device 3) video streaming reduces in quality during poor network conditions I can't think of any live stream app that doesn't do anything similar (youtube live immediately comes to mind). It does seem like the patent was applied for in 2007, but seeing something like makes me think anything anyone builds now is bound to be sued eventually.

neon_electro 4y ago
How is justin.tv being started in 2007 [0] not prior art given the timing? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dejw 4y ago

Another possible scenario is that when facebook saw how basic Voxel is they quit the collab.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

SeanLuke 4y ago

Meta paying $175M would produce much needed schadenfreude. However it's worth mentioning that this case appeared before the notoriously patent-troll-friendly Judge Alan D. Albright. The man actually openly encouraged patent owners to appear before him, and senators have asked the Supreme Court to reprimand him (the Chief Justice has since criticized him). The Albright situation is so bad that the Western District recently had to introduce a forced case randomization in order to keep plaintiffs from shopping for him. I'd say the chance this was overturned on appeal would be high. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txwdce/1:2020cv00655/1099537/54/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/t...

dgs_sgd 4y ago
Can someone who knows about US law explain why it's easier to change procedure and introduce case randomization than to simply sack the judge for handling cases in an obviously biased way?
- lolinder 4y ago
  I'm far from an expert, but on a cursory search it looks like federal judges can only be removed by congressional impeachment, which would be extremely hard to pull off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Tenure_and_salary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Te...
- antasvara 4y ago
  AFAIK, judges can't be "fired" in the traditional sense. If they are going to be removed, they need Congress to impeach the judge in question. As we saw with the Trump impeachment, getting a 2/3 vote in the Senate is exceedingly difficult.
- hollerith 4y ago
  I am not a lawyer, but am a US citizen. A central design goal of the US system is to prevent any one person or group from getting too much power. Judges in particular were seen by the Founders as an important check on the power of the legislative and executive branches of government, so those 2 branches probably simply do not have the power to remove the judge. Other judges, perhaps on the Supreme Court, might have the power to remove the judge, but only for breaches of ethical standards.

googlryas 4y ago

I'd love to know what kind of patents someone developing a walkie talkie app can get. Unfortunately, despite being a software engineer for 20+ years, I have no ability to actually decipher what is actually present in patent applications.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

> The Texas jury found that Facebook Live and Instagram Live incorporated two pieces of Voxer’s technologies that involve streaming media over networks I don't feel sorry for FB at all, but patents for streaming data over a network seems nonsensical, at best. I just picked out a random patent from the lawsuit (https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537/gov.uscourts.txwd.1099537.1.0.pdf https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...), and the claims are so dumb. Patent (https://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=10142270.PN.&OS=PN/10142270&RS=PN/10142270 https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...): > Users are empowered to conduct communications in either: (i) a near-synchronous or "live" conversation, providing a user experience similar to a standard full duplex phone call; or (ii) in a series of back and forth time-delayed transmissions (i.e., time-shifted mode). Further, users engaged in a conversation can seamlessly transition from the live mode to the time-shifted mode and back again. This attribute also makes it possible for users to engage in multiple conversations, at the same time, by prioritizing and shifting between the two modes for each conversation. Two individuals using the system can therefore send recorded voice messages back and forth to each other and review the messages when convenient, or the messages can be sent at a rate where they essentially merge into a live, synchronous voice conversation. Hmmm... this sounds familiar... (stripping away all the nonsense patent language). So people can send voice messages or text messages, or both, or call. Wow, such innovation. > This new form of communication, for the purposes of the present application, is referred to as "Voxing." Thank god this never caught on.

wfbarks 4y ago

WTOI - Walkie Talkies on Internet

guessbest 4y ago
I think it is Radio over IP since a handie talkie is just a transceiver broadcasting a signal in half-duplex. I think a handie talkie may be even simpler in that it is broadcasting simplex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_communication Radio over IP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP

suyash 4y ago

Amount is missing a few zeros no? Should have been worth more.