Comes now the patent battle over VoIP

Om Malik reports a company called Rates Technology is suing Google over the VoIP patents in GoogleTalk. "It seems like this is going to be the new new NTP, only instead of wireless email, it will be the patent “big stick” when it comes to VoIP." (PDF here.) Olga Kharif at BusinessWeek wonders "who the main patent holders are where VoIP is concerned? It could very well be that influential patent holders will include not just Internet Protocol giants like Cisco or Nortel, but also some little companies we never heard of before."