Last night I blogged that today we would hear about RTI suing Google for 5 billion dollars in the mainstream press. Here is that article from Sam Gustin at the New York Post. Sam did an excellent job on the article and has lots of new information to share. He was nice enough to quote me as well:

Currently, RTI has patent infringement lawsuits pending against Alcatel, Vonage and Cablevision seeking billions of dollars in damages.

"It looks like RTI goes after every VoIP company that comes across its radar screen," said Rich Tehrani, of Internet Telephony magazine. "And if they don't pay, RTI sues them."

Weinberger said that virtually every company moving into the VoIP space utilizes technology protected by RTI's patents.

I saw a story from another news source implying Google is only be asked to pay 5 million dollars by RTI. That is definitely incorrect. The way the system works is the higher your earnings, the more you pay. Alcatel is being sued for over a billion dollars. Google wouldn’t pay less than Alcatel.