Google sued over Internet phone calls

A small New York technology firm is suing search titan Google for up to $5 billion dollars for patent violation in the Internet telephony software used in Google Talk.

Jerry Weinberger, chief executive of Rates Technology Inc (RTI), said he was the inventor of software programming that allows telephone calls to be placed over the Internet.

He said 120 companies, including Lucent, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo and Microsoft, have paid RTI to use the technology for "Voice over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) calls.

"[Google] told us to go to hell," the RTI boss said. "They are the most arrogant company in the world."...

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