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June 15, 2007

Jingle Awarded Patent For Advertising-Supported 411 Calls

Michael Arrington

34 comments »

Jingle Networks, operator of the free directory assistance service that has been emulated by AT&T, Google and others, was awarded a U.S. Patent “for providing telephone directory assistance service in which a telephone user calls to the system and the system will, based on the requested number or type of service, hear a recorded advertisement.” The patent was issued in May and is being announced by the Company today.

If the patent is enforceable, and Jingle has the stomach to try, it will be a significant hurdle for their competitors. The company has raised significant capital (over $60 million), but that is nothing compared to the resources of Google and AT&T. If those companies are serious about this business, it could get ugly in the courtroom.

When we last heard from the company, they claimed to be receiving 17 million monthly calls and had grabbed over 6% of the U.S. market for directory assistance calls.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 8:24 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Jingle Awarded Patent For Advertising-Supported 411 Calls  »Technology News | Venture Capital, Startups, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0 Tech

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:00 am

  2. BankBlast » Blog Archive » GPay, a new patent application from Google

    September 5th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

Comments

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  1. MajorNetworkNews

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:33 am

    Wow, this is big big big for jingle. If the patent were just for ads during 411 it would be pathetic. But the patent is really for ads during calls where requested number, time of day, source caller id, and other factors are used to determine the best ad to play…

    Good for jingle, hope they have the stones to enforce it.

  2. LeavingTheDayJob

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:34 am

    At least they haven’t been given a stupid patent on something blindingly obvious. Oh wait….

    By the way, USPTO website says they’re looking for patent examiners. Looks like easy money: read patent application, lunch, grant patent.

  3. uselesspatent

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:38 am

    Why use this service when there is search? Were about to enter the age of the iphone which will include a flood of clones and copycats. Soon the average hillbilly will have a phone with a keyboard and connectivity. The next question is, who will use this service?

  4. uselesspatent

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    It’s like going out and getting a patent on a buggy wip in the month the model-t is about be roll off the assembly-line.

  5. Carmelo Lisciotto

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:50 am

    A boon doggle…

    Carmelo Lisciotto

  6. Sucker

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    Well at least if their service gets outdated, they won’t have to worry about fighting to enforce the patent. Maybe they’ll just get acquired if the patent is worth anything, though.

  7. Concrete Stain

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:19 am

    If I were going to have to go against Goog, MS -

    - I would most def / do it know with their premium lawyers tied up with Viacom -

    -RB

    p.s. Any news of Clown co?

  8. Why is this on blogging news?

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:19 am

    why?

  9. MARK KLEIN MD

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:20 am

    Just ask Jonathan Abrams about his Friendster patent- these things are priceless!

  10. Why is this on blogging news?

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:21 am

    not web 2.0 startup company either. TC is beginning to suck.

  11. alex

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    Just because something was ‘first’ doesn’t make it not ‘plainly obvious’, something patents are not supposed to be awarded for. Im sure this patent will be overturned if it is pursued by Google or AT&T.
    Time to vote for more patent reform.

  12. Coralpoetry

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    Why/who would use this service?

    I just tried a search and it worked.

    No gimmicks. No catches.

    Regards,
    Coral

  13. rabble

    June 15th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    How is it that the patent system is allowed to continue to exist. It is so clearly ANTI-innovation, the very thing it’s supposed to protect. What a joke.

  14. steven

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:22 am

    The patent system is a complete joke. Idiotic things like this should not be granted patents, there’s nothing original or special about this.

    Here’s an idea: Let’s get a few of us together and just patent every existing service we can think of combined with “advertising”. Ka-ching…..yep…that’s about how stupid it is…but if you can’t beat em…

  15. cb

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:23 am

    I have tried to use 1-800-Free-411 several dozen times after reading about it here. As a guy with a normal cell phone (yes, we still exist) who travels a lot to places I’m not familiar with, I love the idea of free 411. But this service is terrible. I don’t use it anymore, because whenever I do I get so angry that I throw my phone and scream. I’m not the most articulate person, but the repeated inability of this service to recognize even the most basic words and obvious requests has driven me back to regular paying 411. I’d rather pay and keep my good mood intact.

  16. Tony Chen

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:42 am

    I’m filing to patent the wheel.

  17. Lex

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    I love patents.

    “No one will do this better than us, because no one will be allowed to do this at all!!”

    Inn0vashun!

  18. Stop supporting VCs...

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    Look at milk & food prices. It’s beginning to rise to high. Why is TC giving free access to rich people.

    America need health care. Rich people don’t care… I think you should watch “sicko” movie

  19. WhatAboutPriorArt

    June 15th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    This patent is garbage and will not stand up in court.

    1) MovieFone technically exists in the wild as prior art. You call to get information (times) and hear relevant ads based on your location or choice.

    2) Just because a database is tied to a process and hardware doesn’t mean you can patent a business model.

    The SIC lookup is clever, but it’s an obvious mechanism for matching selection criteria to content.

  20. Paul

    June 15th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    Great, another patent!

  21. Steve parker

    June 15th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    1-800-SAN DIEGO was operating their own directory assistance business, 2 months before the patented request was even filed. The patent request was an exact copy of what 1-800-SAN DIEGO was offering at the time. This would be a tough court battle for Jingle if the try to enforce it

  22. Dave Toledo

    June 15th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Where’s the innovation to be awarded a patent? I don’t see it.

  23. Austin Storm

    June 15th, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Now they don’t have to worry about competing, if they don’t want to. They could just become a company of lawyers, and sue everyone else.

  24. dave

    June 15th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

    are you shitting me? if they’re able to defend this patent, then it’s priceline.com all over again…damned end of the world bullshit…

  25. Al Ramirez

    June 15th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

    Patents are only really good for manufactured products or actual operating systems. This is just integration of existing platforms and really just a marketing tool as well as a line of business for lawyers to manage.

  26. Robert Harris

    June 15th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    If it works it works! sounds very cool! wonder if they need an original jingle ad company to do their ads at a very reasonable fee especially if the production load gets too heavy! out sourcing is very affordable guys! we like your concept,
    cheers
    jingleads.com

  27. Paul Mannus

    June 15th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    @Robert Harris: “Tagline Jingles for Websites” … what a cool concept! Great jingle you have on JingleAds too. Come to think of it, I have not “heard” any taglines greeting sang on any landing pages yet… definitely an untapped market there. Certainly an effective but a less complicated idea than one that needs a team of high paid lawyers for any patents!

  28. JavaGuy

    June 15th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    Lame. Patent reform now.

  29. Aydin Mirzaee

    June 15th, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    in terms of prior art, aren’t there just a lot of companies that let you hear an ad and the provide some service on the phone (like a reduced rate phone call)? JaJah does this… also there are a bunch of phone cards that do something similar too… its a little different, but the general concept is the same… if this patent stands in court, technically you could patent listening to an advertising and then getting driving directions, or sports scores, etc…

  30. Steve

    June 16th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    Pause to consider the possibility that you do not know enough about the patent system to pass judgement on this patent or the system.

  31. cringle

    June 19th, 2007 at 1:28 am

    in response to those who complained about the quality of jingle’s speech recognition… talk to nuance… and try 800-GOOG-411 .. .it’s the same service with about three times more accurate speech recognition….

  32. Chad

    June 20th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    I was an early users of FREE-411 (Jingles stuff) and never used it again after trying GOOG-411. I concur with cringle’s claim that GOOG-411 is MUCH MUCH better in voice recognition. The search/retrieval process with GOOG-411 is night and day better versus FREE-411 which is frustrating to use with terrible voice recognition.

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