j2 Global Communications (NASDAQ:JCOM) is set to report its earnings this evening. j2 provides outsourced messaging and communications services to individuals and businesses worldwide. The Company offers fax, voicemail, e-mail and call handling services, as well as bundled suites of certain of these services. With business environments toughening and majority of the management undertaking restructuring plans, we can be rest assured that they want more messaging and communication services which allow them to integrate their staff as well as with clients in a more economical manner than travelling personally. All the more relevance for the company’s products is out here. This move is also seen to have been reiterated in the stock price also, over the past one year the stock has lost a mere 9.7% and over the last three months the stock has gained 11.28%.

There was more encouraging news in the last three months for the shareholders. The US Patent and Trademark Office confirmed the validity of two patents covering aspects of the company's core technologies. Patent No. 6,208,638, entitled "Method And Apparatus For Transmission and Retrieval of Facsimile and Audio Messages Over a Circuit or Packet Switched Network," covers aspects of the Company's core inbound fax/voice to email technology. Patent No. 6,597,688, entitled "Scalable Architecture for Transmission of Messages over a Network," covers aspects of the Company's core outbound fax technology. The PTO has issued official Reexamination Certificates for both patents, concluding these reexaminations.  "These proceedings have reinforced our position as a leading holder of IP in our space. We remain committed to building our patent portfolio and to continuing to protect our IP from being used without our permission." said Hemi Zucker, j2 Global's CEO. The Company also announced that the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has granted j2 Global's motion for summary judgment in Venali's antitrust counterclaim against j2 Global and denying Venali's motion for attorneys' fees. Venali brought this counterclaim in response to one of the two lawsuits filed by j2 against Venali for infringement of several U.S. patents.

In early, December j2 acquired the assets of MailWise LLC, a Boston-based provider of hosted email security services, and the fax and voice messaging assets of Mijanda, Inc., a Canton, Michigan-based provider of digital fax and voice messaging solutions. Terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed, although the financial impact to j2 Global of either or both combined is not expected to be material.

More on the product front, the company announced that eFax, its premier brand, has initiated a searchable fax feature to a pilot group of eFax customers.This searchable fax feature enables the user to instantly locate faxes. Using a patent-pending process, all incoming faxes are automatically indexed into an online database for future reference.

Earnings Estimates
Current Estimates: $0.39
Number of Estimates: 6
High Estimate: $0.40
Low Estimate: $0.37
Last Year EPS: $0.34
Percentage Growth: 14.00 %

Disclosure: The author does not own any of the stocks mentioned above.