Ronald A. Katz

Ronald A. Katz (born March 10, 1936 in Cleveland , Cuyahoga County , Ohio ) is an American inventor , entrepreneur and president of the Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing LP .

His inventions for which he more than 50 US patents holds, he developed mainly in the field of automated call center technology , and they relate to toll-free numbers (toll free numbers), automated call routing, automated call distribution, voice response systems , computer telephony Integration , speech recognition and much more.

In 1961, Katz co-founded Telecredit, Inc. , the first company to enable merchants to automatically check checks over the phone without the help of a live operator.

In 1988 he entered into a partnership with American Express , which later became First Data Corporation .

He later founded Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, LP (RAKTL) with the main purpose of licensing his patent portfolio to companies that use automated call center technology. To date, over 150 companies have acquired such licenses and paid over $ 1 billion in royalties, including AT&T , Bank of America , Citibank , Delta Air Lines , Hewlett-Packard , Home Shopping Network , IBM , Microsoft , Sears, Roebuck and Company , Wachovia , Wells Fargo, and TD Ameritrade.

Katz is accused of patent trolling because of his selfish and aggressive approach . His patent specifications are usually 20 to 40 pages long, followed by hundreds of pages describing the claims that arise from them. Companies that refuse to use his licenses have been and are sometimes litigated by his lawyers.

Several of his patents have been officially reviewed by the director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office .

literature

• Evan I. Schwartz: Juice: the creative fuel that drives today's world-class inventors, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2004, pp. 164-182.