Inventor and Entrepreneur
In 1961, Katz co-founded Telecredit, Inc. This was the first company to "enable merchants to verify consumer checks over the phone using an automated system without the assistance of a live operator". In 1988, Mr. Katz formed a partnership with American Express Company to provide call processing services. That partnership later became First Data Corporation.
Katz has since founded Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P. (RAKTL). RAKTL's primary purpose is to license the Katz patent portfolio to companies using automated call centers. Over 150 companies have taken a license to the patents. RAKTL has thus earned approximately a billion dollars in license fees. such as suing accused infringers who refuse to take a license.
An associate professor of patent law at the University of Missouri Law School in Columbia and author of the patent-law blog called Patently-O, said that he generally has no problem with a patent holder suing infringers.
Similarly, a patent attorney and the President and Founder of IPWatchdog, Inc. stated that “it is probably better to think of Katz as one of the premiere American inventors who has been able to monetize his inventions by bundling his rights into a portfolio that he licenses to those who are using technologies that cover his innovation.”
Read more about this topic: Ronald A. Katz
Famous quotes containing the words inventor and and/or inventor:
“I have defeated them all.... I was left with some money to battle with the world when quite young, and at the present time have much to feel proud of.... The Lord gave me talent, and I know I have done good with it.... For my brains have made me quite independent and without the help of any man.”
—Harriet A. Brown, U.S. inventor and educator. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 8, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)
“It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)