Apple, AT&T and Klausner Settle Patent Lawsuit

In December of last year, Klausner Technologies filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple claiming the company’s iPhone Visual Voicemail feature violated patents Klausner held, which allow users to selectively check voice messages rather than listen to them in the order they were received. The lawsuit also covered iPhone service provider AT&T and Comcast, Cablevision and Skype.

The iPhone’s Visual Voice mail allows users to view all of their voice messages on screen, similar to the way they can view text messages in their inbox. Klausner claimed Apple infringed upon the company’s patent on a "Telephone Answering Device Linking Displayed Data with Recorded Audio Message" and demanded Apple pay $360 million dollars in damages.

The company already licenses the technology to a number of other and settled the lawsuit with eBay owned Skype last month.

Yesterday, Apple, Klausner and AT&T announced that they had settled the lawsuit and Klausner had agreed to license the technology to Apple. Details of the settlement are not yet available but Klausner has said the lawsuit against Apple and AT&T will be dropped.

The settlements are nearly par for the course for Klausner at this stage with similar deals to license the patent to AOL and Vonage going through in past. While details of the Apple/AT&T settlement have not been released, we’re willing to bet whatever Apple paid for the patent license is significantly less than $360 million that Klausner was suing for.