Emergency Management Blogs

Emergency Management Blog - Rick Wimberly & Lorin Bristow Alerting and Warning
Alerts & Notifications

by Rick Wimberly & Lorin Bristow: Best practices for emergency notification programs

Subscribe via RSS | About this Blog | Contact Rick Wimberly & Lorin Bristow

Notification Companies Sued
September 15, 2009
Bookmark and Share

Latest Blog Posts RSS

Emergency Management Blog - Eric Holdeman: Disaster Zone GAO: Challenges in Use of Web 2.0
Jul 29 There is a nice tidy GAO report Challenges In Federal Agencies' Use of Web 1.0 Technologies…
Emergency Management Blog - Eric Holdeman: Disaster Zone Cyber Attacks Increasing
Jul 28 Earlier this week I was advocating that Climate Change/Global Warming and its impacts should…
Emergency Management Blog - Rick Wimberly & Lorin Bristow Alerting and Warning Emergency Notification AFTER the Emergency
Jul 28 A short, but insightful online comment by a New England resident serves as a good…

We doubt many emergency management professionals had previously heard of TechRadium, which markets a notification technology called IRIS(tm). They will now, not because of new product announcements, but because of new lawsuit announcements. TechRadium has released a press release saying they have sued eleven more companies over patent infringement.

Here's what the company's press release says: "TechRadium develops and sells mass notification systems that allow an originator to send a single message simultaneously and instantaneously to multiple subscribers. The subscriber receives the information through any combination of devices, including telephone, cell phone, fax, wireless systems, alerts and other methods, in multiple languages."

To many, that description of the patent will sound very similar to commonplace technology that has been used for years. TechRadium, however, claims they have a patent on the concept and are casting a wide net. They announced they had sued Twitter(tm) several weeks ago. Now, they've announced they've sued: AtHoc, Inc., BroadBlast, Inc., Edulink Systems, Inc., First Call Network, Inc., GroupCast, LLC, Parlant Technologies, Inc., Reliance Communications, Inc., Saf-T-Net, Inc., SWN Communications, Inc., SwiftReach Networks, Inc., and Twenty-First Century Communications, Inc. TechRadium recently issued another press release saying they had, "reached an agreement with Blackboard Inc. to cross-license several patents and patent applications, allowing each company to continue to provide mass notification technology and services to clients."

We know of some emergency management professionals who were up in arms when the Twitter(tm) lawsuit was filed, some saying they've been using this type of technology for years. We can imagine what will be said about this latest group of lawsuits.

Will there be more?
Top

Comments
Add a Comment


Techradium represents Trolls. Period. The patent editor needs to be lynched. Stuff in the patent they were awarded has been in educational books 20 years prior.
From Trolls October 10
Interesting they haven't gone after players such as Dialogic and Reverse911 who have been doing this since the late 80s. Maybe they're not sure if a patent would hold up against these guys?
From safetysam September 16

Latest Emergency Management News

Arizona’s Immigration Law Takes Effect, Lacks Federal Support

Arizona’s controversial immigration law went into effect, but a federal judge blocked key provisions of the bill.
Badsey's Photography. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
The Emergency Manager’s Dilemma: Should You Take Your BlackBerry on Vacation?

Since disasters don’t take holidays, should you disconnect during time off?
DHS Launches Enhancements to General Aviation Security

A nationwide campaign and a streamlined system for vetting passengers and crew on general aviation aircraft aim to increase security.

4 Ways to Get EM

Subscribe to Emergency Management MagazineFollow Emergency Management on TwitterSubscribe to Emergency Management HeadlinesSubscribe to Emergency Management Newsletters


Blog Archives



Weekly Newsletter Subscription

SUBSCRIBE TO EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

Get 6 issues of EM's print magazine.
Subscribe Back Issues