Vonage Wins Permanent Stay in Verizon Case

kamikaze-Tech writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC today issued Vonage a permanent stay of a previous court's injunction that would have barred it from signing up new customers. Vonage sought the stay following an April 6th decision by the US District Court in Alexandria, VA enjoining the company from using certain VoIP technology to add new customers."

verizon will do whatever it takes to win

[Anonymous Coward]

i work for a CLEC in NH. Verizon continually changes the rules
on us to make our lives difficult. I hope vonage wins the day.

Not so fast on that 'huge sigh'

[morgan_greywolf]

The stay is granted until the appeals process is concluded. IOW, if Vonage loses in the appeals process, of course, the District Court's injuction goes back into effect.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

Re:Ok, so now what?

[morgan_greywolf]

Wait for the patents to expire?

They continue the appeals process. If they win on appeal, Vonage continues doing business. If they exhaust all available appeals and lose, the injuction goes back into effect, Vonage can't sign up any more customers and eventually goes out of business, unless it gets bought out by Verizon.

As a very happy Vonage customer, I'm hoping they win.

Re:Does the general public know?

[ivan256]

especially the non-technical ones who don't even understand the 911 and VoIP thing

Given that many "technical" people still don't get the 911 thing (and claim it's way worse than it actually is), maybe it's for the best...

It wouldn't be the end of the world if your phone company went out of business and you had to sign up with a new one. Especially in the age of number portablilty.

Link to the actual text of the patent in question

[Dejohn]

Here's the patent Click Here [uspto.gov]

Re:Corperate America wins again

[norminator]

Huh? How do you think the injunction came into existence in the first place? Verizon has already taken the argument to court.

We are still in the deliberation stage. Verizon and Vonage can still reach an agreement that is mutually beneficial (at least better then one that may be arbitrary assigned by a judge).

Actually, no, we're in the appeals stage. The deliberation ended a couple weeks ago when the jury decided that Vonage infringed on 3 out of 5 of Verizon's patents. Then Verizon sought an injunction against Vonage. I think it's safe to say that either Verizon, Vonage, or both are not interested in a licensing agreement. Vonage's entire defense was that the patents are junk and are too broad to be valid. Of course they'd rather pay licensing fees than close up shop, but if that possibility ever comes up, it will happen after the appeals process has been exhausted.

And when you say it's more profitable to Verizon to license the patents' use, I think that's complete speculation. We don't know how much business Verizon can hope to reclaim by stomping out Vonage (and then the other VoIP providers that could also be infringing), and we don't know how much they'd be able to charge for licensing fees (or how much Vonage would be able to pay).

Re:Vonage sucks donkey balls, no, really!

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay $16 a month for 500 minutes, which is about 30 minutes more than I have ever used in one month. I can take my little Vonage box with me to any broadband connection on earth and my phone magically rings there. When someone leaves me voicemail their message gets emailed to me. If I ever want to see who has called me or who I have called I can check it on a webpage. I've had Vonage for almost three years now and haven't had a single problem with it.

Tell me what can compete with this for $4 a month. Hell, tell me what can compete with this for even $30 a month. I used to pay almost $40 a month just for local phone service!

Re:Ok, so now what?

[rm69990]

If they were smart, they would be spending this time also working around the patents (if possible) so they could also survive an injunction. Of course, it may not matter. Vonage is hemmoraging cash at an unsustainable rate. They only have $550M in total assets ($500M in Cash and Short term investments) and they lost $120M last quarter alone.