TxtCentre patent confirmed as valid by IPONZ
AUCKLAND, NZ. – 28 February, 2006. TxtCentre today announced that the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) has turned down an application to revoke TxtCentre’s txt messaging initiated call back patent. The application to revoke was lodged by one of New Zealand’s largest financial organisations.
Warren Tobin, Managing Director of TxtCentre Limited, “We predicted that txt messaging would become an extremely important channel for contact centres and we were the first in the world to offer a range of interactive contact centre txt services. Many of our first contact centre products were released at a time when txt was often considered as nothing more than a cheap chat channel for teenagers and we have spent many years advocating the business use of inbound txt. In 2002 we moved to patent the concept of a txt message initiated call back and a patent was granted and sealed in 2003. In 2006 we can now prove that txt channels increase the level of response to advertising, provide a service benefit to consumers as well as delivering various cost and operational benefits to business. Our patent involves the concept of triggering and executing a call back service from a txt message exchange. This often becomes important during business txt communication processes but is absolutely crucial where campaigns are targeted at the sale of products or services. Without call back only a compromise solution can be provided.
Eighteen months ago a large financial organisation infringed our patent and when we brought this to their attention they proceeded with a formal challenge to our patent. While on the one hand this showed the value that a large organisation placed in our invention, it was difficult to be faced with no choice other than to invest a significant amount of time and money into protecting our existing R&D investment. It was also frustrating to know that the same patent had also been granted and sealed in Australia and the UK, was pending in the US, and here was this large company challenging it in New Zealand. Eventually IPONZ ratified the validity of our patent.
TxtCentre has an existing and rapidly growing customer base in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. With txt popping up more and more in mainstream advertising we believe that we are fortunate to have such a valuable company asset.
TxtCentre was formed to harness the opportunities afforded by mobile phones and the new forms of communication available through them. TxtCentre provides a wide range of interactive and bi-directional txt, image, video and mobile phone centred messaging services for enterprise and contact centre organizations throughout Australasia, Europe and North America. TxtCentre is also pioneering mobile TV services in Australasia, the UK and the US.
TxtCentre New Zealand is a partner of Vodafone New Zealand and Telecom New Zealand.