Google Must Pay $12 Million for Copying Internet Phone Features

Google LLC must pay $12 million for incorporating Flypsi Inc.'s protected calling features into its Google Voice internet phone service, a Texas federal jury determined Monday.

The founders of Flypsi—a telecommunications software firm that does business as Flyp—sued Google in 2022 claiming the tech giant infringed five patents covering various incoming and outgoing call technologies. They include telephone network system features that let callers use a single phone number across several devices, as well as multiple phone numbers on a single device, according to filings in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Google began offering many of these same calling features when its Google Voice service premiered in 2009, well before Flyp received its first patent in 2017, the company argued in court filings. Google also denied that any functions added during Google Voice’s 2017 upgrade were based on Flyp’s patents.

Flyp, however, said in court filings Google “abandoned” the earliest Voice app and therefore infringed its patents by rolling out the upgraded version of Voice in 2017. Google vigorously denied that allegation, but Flyp filings cited contemporaneous trade press reports chiding Google for having neglected its initial calling app.

Jurors determined that the earliest versions of Google Voice didn’t commercially use the technology covered by Flyp’s patents, and therefore weren’t protected prior art that safeguarded the company against infringement claims, according to the verdict sheet.

Flyp accused Google of infringing US Patent Nos. 9,667,770; 10,051,105; 10,334,094; 11,012,554; and 11,218,585, according to court records. Jurors found Google infringed all five patents and rejected its argument the patents were invalid, according to the verdict sheet.

Some of Flyp’s claims should be rejected, Google had argued, because the startup’s founders failed to disclose Google Voice’s pre-existing calling technology to the US Patent and Trademark Office when they applied for at least one of the asserted patents in late 2021.

Flyp had planned to tell jurors that Google learned of its technology following a November 2015 meeting between a Flyp founder and a representative from the venture capital firm Google Ventures—now known as GV Management Co. LLC.

But Judge Alan Albright, who presided over the case in Waco federal court, ruled Jan. 16 that Flyp couldn’t mention the meeting at trial because there wasn’t a strong enough connection between the two Alphabet Inc. sister companies.

“If this is all, that there’s a meeting with someone at Google Ventures and he’s a buddy with people who work at Google,” Albright said in that order, “that’s not going to be enough.”

Flypsi is represented by Winston & Strawn LLP. Google is represented by Perkins Coie LLP, Paul Hastings LLP, Munger Tolles & Solson LLP, and Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP.

Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment after the verdict was read aloud in court on Monday, after regular business hours.

The case is Flypsi Inc. (D/B/A Flyp) v. Google LLC, W.D. Tex., 6:22-cv-00031, 2/26/24.