Voip-Pal.com Inc. (OTC: VPLM) receives fourth patent, becomes attractive acquisition target

Voip-Pal.com
Inc. (OTC: VPLM) announced on
February 3, 2014, that it had received its Mobile Gateway Patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, the fourth patent in which the company has been issued.

Voip-Pal’s
Mobile Gateway patent, according to the company, resolves the roaming
challenge, making every call a local call. Carriers, however, retain their
subscriber base, making them immune from Skype and Vonage’s perceived cost
advantages. The only requirement for Mobile Gateway is a portable device –
such as a smartphone with functionality to negotiate the temporary use of a
local number.

This
patent is significant in that any firm in the telecommunications industry is
potentially infringing on Voip-Pal.com’s patent, especially those offering Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP). In fact, every VoIP company uses Voip-Pal.com’s Routing,
Billing and Rating (RBR) patented technology. For a VoIP network to emulate a
telecommunications system, RBR is required, which is the essential call origin,
destination, and routing across the Internet so that it will interface
seamlessly into a telecommunications network. 

The
implications of this disruptive technology are far reaching. Imagine, if you
will, every mobile smartphone sold has an application in it that runs in the
background (never has to be opened up or accessed like Skype) and you can make
any overseas call at the the same cost as a local call. For those who have ever
tried to use Skype on a smartphone, they likely understand that its free
application is not without its challenges.

Voip-Pal.com’s
Mobile Gateway, then, would make long-distance roaming charges a thing of the
past. This is especially an issue within the European Union, where legislators
are currently working on trying to eliminate roaming charges for consumers who
want to make calls to other EU nations. Thus, acquiring
Voip-Pal.com could create a potentially lucrative revenue stream for one of the
European telecommunications companies.   

On
December 4, 2013, Voip-Pal.com announced that “they have received expressions
of interest from well qualified entities to potentially license its suite of patents
or acquire Voip-Pal.com” and that “discussions are currently ongoing.”

Selling
itself seems to be the end game for this company. Valuing Voip-Pal.com’s
patents is difficult as it can’t be compared to any others that currently
exist. Enforcing these patents, however, would be impossible for a small
company such as Voip-Pal.com. For tech giants such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), though, defending
patents through corporate litigation has become a profitable part of the
business. 

The ‘Rockstar Consortium’
is a good example of this as Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:
AAPL),
Blackberry, Ericsson, Microsoft (NASDAQ:
MSFT),
and Sony teamed up to spend US$4.5 billion to purchase patents from a bankrupt
Nortel in 2011, and are trying to sue companies such as Google and Samsung for
infringing on Nortel’s patented technology.