The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that the top four U.S. carriers didn’t infringe on Greenville Communications’ telephone message marketing patents. Greenville claimed in 2007 that the companies that are now Verizon…
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Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA had infringed its patents on technology that substitutes messages or music in the place of a busy signal. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Cooper had ruled in her Trenton, N.J., court that the carriers’ ringback tones option targeted specific callers with a specified message or other sound. She found Greenville’s patents used the same message or other sound for all callers. The Federal Circuit affirmed her ruling on Friday, though Judges William Bryson, Richard Linn and Kimberly Moore didn’t issue an opinion (http://1.usa.gov/19VPEDx). Attorneys for Greenville and the carriers had no comment.