Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to settle an infringement lawsuit relating to patented interactive voice technology with Los Angeles-based Ronald Katz Technology Licensing.
The patents held by Katz cover a wide range of interactive technology including automated forms of customer service securities trading.
As part of the settlement Morgan Stanley has paid for a non-exclusive licence which covers use of the technology for "financial services call processing" and "automated securities transactions". This includes customer service delivered through automated systems and live agents.
Other terms of the licence were not disclosed.
Over the last few years, Katz has settled similar patent suits with a raft of financial services firms and payment processors including American Express, Ameritrade, Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, Certegy, Citigroup, Edward Jones, First Data, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, LaSalle Bank and PNC Financial Services.