One of the warm but perhaps soon to be hot topics from the blogsphere right now centers on yet another lawsuit against Google, this time a patent infringement suit regarding VoIP (voice over IP). We caught wind of this tidbit from Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch , and followed the trail. The plaintiff, a company known as Rates Technology Inc., has filed suit in New York against Google for Google Talk’s VoIP.

Rates claims Google is using technology based on two patents Rates filed in 1995 and 2001. Rates is seeking enforcement of their patents, damages, an injunction against Google and attorney fees. Rates has a host of VoIP agreements with companies such as Nortek and Cisco.

But this isn’t the first time Rates has sued for patent infringement. In fact, according to Rich Tehrani of VoIP Blog, Rates Technology exists “to collect revenue from other companies… In total they have agreements in place with 700-800 companies and have litigated 25 times in 15 years.”

Court proceedings are said to begin February 3, 2006. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.