Thursday, June 10, 2010

TCS Text-Messaging (SMS) Patent - who is affected?


It seems strange to me that there is so little public discussion about the rather sweeping SMS patent enforcement campaign by Telecommunication Systems, Inc..

A little over a year ago, Telecommunications Systems (TCS) and their attorneys started sending out letters to SMS service providers and their clients across the country. TCS claimed that they were infringing on the “Smith” patents (US Patent #'s 6,891,811 and 7,355,990) that cover MO (mobile originated) SMS application-to-person (A2P) services.

I was curious so I downloaded both patents and spent a day going through them. The claim is that many SMS service providers are infringing on the patents because their services enable a person to send an SMS message to an application and receive a response. Pretty basic.

In a nutshell, the general scenario is:

  1. A cell phone subscriber sends an MO text message to a short code (its doesn't have to be a short code, but this is where TCS appears to be focusing)

  2. A "gateway" server receives the text message, inserts it into an HTTP request, and sends it to an application server over the internet

  3. The application server replies via HTTP with some piece of information

  4. The gateway server inserts the piece of information into a text message and sends it back to the cell phone

The key elements are that A) the mobile originated (MO) SMS must be inserted into an HTTP request, and B) the HTTP response must in turn be inserted into a mobile terminated (MT) SMS message and sent back to the cell phone, thus establishing a two-way communication.

There is some debate as to whether or not "prior art" exists bringing into question the validity of the patent. The most compelling case seems to be from Kannel.org, the open source SMS gateway provider. Kannel states “This technology has been Open-Source since at least 1999 and there is plenty of documentation to prove it publicly on Kannel.org.”

Nevertheless, TCS does have a registered patent with USPTO and they can and will attempt to enforce it. All technology firms using SMS communications should review their services in light of these patents and determine if they are at risk of an infringement claim.

For more information on the patent, industry comments, etc., there is a great article on mobilemarketer.com.


Steve

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17 comments:

  1. FWIW, I'm claiming to have been the first with a full, functional, usable system that was in fact being used, in 1982/1983.

    http://frank-segler.blogspot.com/2010/08/texting-now-27-years-old.html

    Link above goes into detail, also links to both the BASIC and 6502 Assembly code I wrote for the project.

    In a nutshell, my brother and I (I was 14 and he was 12 at the time) ran Dune BBS in Huntington Beach, CA. We created a texting system which allowed users to call in from any telephone and receive text messages that were sent to them by other users. A voice synthesizer (text to speech) read them their messages. Additionally we developed the input system using a 2 key per character system as well as accounting for the two letters of the alphabet which did not appear on phones of that time period.

    It might make a difference to someone because of the litigation, but my system clearly is prior art.

    It also makes texting 27 years old. Or thereabouts :).

    I have already publicly stated that all my code is free and in the public domain. Several programs that I wrote back then are still being sold today.

    Anyhow Ive had my run ins with patent trolls and really find them to be quite despicable. Be happy to help anyone wanting texting to be open for all and to break down any walls to its free and full use.

    If you want to contact me, leave a message on my blog. They get emailed to me.

    Thank you

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