Three insurance providers purchase licenses under patent portfolio held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing

The companies are:

• American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus (AFLAC), the number one provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance in the United States with headquarters in Columbus, GA;
• Allianz of America, Inc., a holding company that provides services to insurance affiliates of the Allianz Group in North America; and,
• AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company, headquartered in New York City, one of the oldest and largest life insurance organizations in the United States, and part of the AXA Group (NYSE:AXA), a diversified financial services organization offering a broad spectrum of financial advisory, insurance and investment management products and services.

The separate licenses cover services offered by each of the companies in specific Fields of Use, including the “Financial Services Call Processing” field. These services, including customer care available over the phone, are delivered through automated systems as well as the combination of automated systems and live agents. Other terms of the licenses were not disclosed.

Ronald A. Katz stated, “We welcome these leading providers of insurance services and insurance based financial instruments to the large number of companies who have purchased license rights under this portfolio.”

The patents held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P., cover a wide range of interactive technology including automated forms of: customer service, securities trading, merchandising, prepaid services, prescription refill service, telephone conferences, registration, home shopping, as well as functions involved in securing information from databases by telephone, interactive cable transactions, and various other uses of toll free and local numbers.

The technologies in the licensed patents were invented by Ronald A. Katz. His pioneering efforts created one of the first, if not the first, inbound computerized call centers in 1961 when he formed Telecredit, Inc., the nation’s first on-line real time credit and check cashing authorization system. He was awarded a patent as co-inventor of that technology.