Motorola, Research in Motion Sued Over Voicemail

Patent holding company Klausner Technologies Inc. on Monday said it's suing Motorola Inc. and the maker of BlackBerry smartphones for allegedly violating its patent for visual voicemail.

Klausner said Motorola uses visual voicemail on its "Cliq" cell phones. Other Motorola phones with visual voicemail already are under license from Klausner.

Visual voicemail lets callers see a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to retrieve first.

The company also said Research in Motion Ltd. violated the same patent on certain BlackBerry Bold 9700 phones. Other BlackBerry models have licenses from Klausner.

Both lawsuits were filed in a Texas federal court.

In August, Klausner sued Cisco Systems Inc. and Avaya Inc. for infringement on a visual voicemail patent.

Last year, Klausner settled with Apple Inc. and AT&T Inc. over the same issue. The company said it has 24 licensees.

Research in Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, did not immediately return calls for comment, nor did Motorola. Shares of Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., were up 14 cents to $8.52 in afternoon trading. Research in Motion was up 53 cents to $60.25.

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