Telephia Inc., a consulting firm that provides measurement information on the mobile industry, said it filed a lawsuit against fellow research company M:Metrics Inc. on claims the company violated Telephia’s intellectual property.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, focuses on M:Metrics’ smart phone metering software. Telephia claims the software infringes on its patents for on-device usage tracking technology. The company is asking for a permanent injunction against its Seattle-based competitor.
In a public statement announcing the lawsuit, Telephia cited two patents regarding a “System and Method for Measuring Wireless Device and Network Usage and Performance Metrics,” filed in 2001 and issued in 2004.
“It’s regrettable that we need to resort to legal action, but we have been unable to obtain their cooperation through other means,” said Sid Gorham, Telephia’s chief executive officer. “We plan to vigorously protect and defend our intellectual property in this area.”
“The suit by Telephia, citing two patents in their press release as being infringed by M:Metrics, is totally without merit,” said Will Hodgman, M:Metrics’ chief executive officer. “Any reasonable inquiry into what M:Metrics’ technology actually does would have clearly shown no infringement of those two patents. As a result of not having made that inquiry, M:Metrics will be asking the court for Rule 11 sanctions and attorney fees against Telephia if they insist on further prosecution of this baseless action.”
M:Metrics said it has not yet released details on its meter product, but that it will do so this week.
The move underscores the increasingly heated competition and differing methodologies between the two leaders in the mobile usage measurement space. M:Metrics conducts consumer surveys to track usage and data consumption on mass-market phones, but uses on-device software to monitor smart-phone users.
Telephia, by contrast, uses “bill scraping”-monitoring wireless consumers’ monthly statements-to measure mobile usage. Telephia is developing on-device monitoring technology based on its patents, however.
Indeed, the race to produce and deploy metering software for mass-market handsets may play a major role in determining a winner in the space.
A third player, Nielsen Media Research, said it will join the playground with on-device technology to track usage.
