Over the past year, Klauser Technologies has sued numerous companies, including Apple and AT&T, for violating a patent the company had won back in 1994 for its "Telephone answering device linking displayed data with recorded audio message" patent for visual voice mail.

Now Klausner has added Verizon and Google to the mix, along with LG and some other smaller companies. An InformationWeek report said that Verizon filed its own lawsuit against Klausner two weeks ago in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, anticipating the attack; Verizon's suit seeks to have a federal judge declare the inventor's visual voicemail patent invalid.

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