Rich Tehrani (pictured) is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC. In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended VoIP event, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.

Rich covers the telephony and related businesses on an ongoing basis, and has recently been covering an interesting story involving a company known as Rates Technology Inc. and its  lawsuit against Google. Here is his exclusive report for SEO/SEM Journal:

Rates Technology, Inc. (RTI) recently sued Google for patent infringement. You may be wondering just who is this company and how could they take on the Web’s favorite search engine — a company flush with cash — and hope to win? Here is everything you need to know.

RTI has a suite of patents covering technology used in the transmission of Voice over IP (VoIP) calls among other things. The company collects payments from corporations who potentially infringe on the patents in exchange for protection from a patent infringement suit.

The company has litigated against some of the largest telecom companies including Sharp, Nortel, and Alcatel. RTI has agreements in place with 76 large companies such as Huawei Technologies, Lucent, and Cisco.

RTI has litigated 25 times in 15 years and according to the company, the entry level litigation cost is two million dollars.

Since Google is being sued by RTI, they were likely approached by Rates Technology and refused to pay the requested amount. It should be noted that company spokesperson Jerry Weinberger says that RTI does not negotiate, for if they negotiated their fees it would not be fair to the other companies that paid the full amount.

There is no ongoing licensing fee for the RTI patents, rather RTI charges a one-time fee based on one of five tiers, each according to highest parent company’s worldwide sales. They do not deviate from these tiers. In exchange you get a covenant protecting you from a lawsuit.