Fax Services

The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has confirmed the validity of two patents covering aspects of j2 Global’s (eFax’s parent company) core technologies. Patent No. 6,208,638, entitled “Method And Apparatus For Transmission and Retrieval of Facsimile and Audio Messages Over a Circuit or Packet Switched Network,” covers aspects of the Company’s core inbound fax/voice to email technology. Patent No. 6,597,688, entitled “Scalable Architecture for Transmission of Messages over a Network,” covers aspects of the Company’s core outbound fax technology. The PTO has issued official Reexamination Certificates for both patents, concluding these reexaminations.

J2 Global has been fighting to protect their intellectual property from alleged infringement by others in their space and this reexamination is a nod in their direction.  The Company has pending suits against Captaris, Inc., a subsidiary of Opentext (NASDAQ: OPTX), EasyLink Services International Corporation (NASDAQ: ESIC), Protus, Inc., Venali, Inc. and others.

In addition, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has granted j2 Global’s motion for summary judgment in Venali’s antitrust counterclaim against j2 Global and denying Venali’s motion for attorneys’ fees. Venali brought this counterclaim in response to one of the two lawsuits filed by j2 against Venali for infringement of several U.S. patents.

Protus IP Solutions Inc., Captaris, Inc. and EasyLink Services International Corporation have been named in a lawsuit by j2 Global Communications, eFax parent company, stating that they violate claims of U.S. Patent Numbers 6,597,688 and 7,020,132, both entitled “Scalable Architecture for Transmission of Messages over a Network.”

The suit against Protus, Captaris and EasyLink is seeking monetary damages for past infringement and injunctive relief prohibiting from the companies from continuing to infringe the patents.