Yesterday, an inventor filed a voicemail patent lawsuit against Cox Communications, Verizon, Google and other companies.

Judah Klausner’s company, Klausner Technologies, also named LG Electronics, Comverse Technology, Citrix Systems and Embarq in its patent infringement lawsuit that was filed in a U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas, according to Reuters.

Klausner’s patent infringement complaint is based on patents that he started receiving in 1992 in several countries for “visual voicemail,” which is a graphical way of interacting with voicemail that allows it to be used like e-mail.

Verizon has a mobile phone, called the Voyager, which was built by LG Electronics and has a visual voicemail feature.

Klausner has won several settlements with companies, including Apple, Comcast, AOL and Vonage, after filing similar lawsuits.

Verizon filed its own lawsuit against Klausner on Aug. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

“We anticipated Klausner's action,” Verizon spokesman Jim Smith wrote in an e-mail to CED. “We are seeking a declaration that Klausner's visual voicemail patent is invalid and that Verizon's system does not infringe the patent in any event.”

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