Notification Companies Sued

We doubt many emergency management professionals had previously heard of TechRadium, which markets a notification technology called IRIS(tm). They will now, not because of new product announcements, but because of new lawsuit announcements. TechRadium has released a press release saying they have sued eleven more companies over patent infringement.

Here's what the company's press release says: "TechRadium develops and sells mass notification systems that allow an originator to send a single message simultaneously and instantaneously to multiple subscribers. The subscriber receives the information through any combination of devices, including telephone, cell phone, fax, wireless systems, alerts and other methods, in multiple languages."

To many, that description of the patent will sound very similar to commonplace technology that has been used for years. TechRadium, however, claims they have a patent on the concept and are casting a wide net. They announced they had sued Twitter(tm) several weeks ago. Now, they've announced they've sued: AtHoc, Inc., BroadBlast, Inc., Edulink Systems, Inc., First Call Network, Inc., GroupCast, LLC, Parlant Technologies, Inc., Reliance Communications, Inc., Saf-T-Net, Inc., SWN Communications, Inc., SwiftReach Networks, Inc., and Twenty-First Century Communications, Inc. TechRadium recently issued another press release saying they had, "reached an agreement with Blackboard Inc. to cross-license several patents and patent applications, allowing each company to continue to provide mass notification technology and services to clients."

We know of some emergency management professionals who were up in arms when the Twitter(tm) lawsuit was filed, some saying they've been using this type of technology for years. We can imagine what will be said about this latest group of lawsuits.

Will there be more?