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Vonage Settles Patent Suit With Sprint-Nextel
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 08, 2007 05:53 PM
from the money-can-soothe-a-lot-of-hurt-feelings dept.
from the money-can-soothe-a-lot-of-hurt-feelings dept.
mytrip writes to tell us that Vonage has been able to settle their patent differences with Sprint-Nextel for a mere $80 million. This settlement resolves all pending claims by Sprint-Nextel as well as licensing Vonage to use over 100 patents and a $5 million advance in prepayment for services.
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Vonage Hit With $69.5M Judgement 234 comments
andy1307 writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Net telephone company Vonage Holdings Corp. was ordered in federal court Tuesday to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for infringing on six telecommunications patents owned by competitor Sprint Nextel Corp. In addition to the damages, jurors awarded Sprint Nextel a 5 percent royalty from Vonage on future revenues. It was the second verdict against Vonage this year. A jury in Virginia determined in March that Vonage had violated three Verizon patents in building its Internet phone system. The jury awarded Verizon $58 million in damages plus 5.5 percent royalties on future revenues. Greg Gorbatenko, a telecommunications and media analyst for Jackson Securities, said the decision 'feels like a death knell' for Vonage because future revenue will likely dry up, preventing the company from investing in better technology or improving customer service."
[+]
Vonage Settles With Verizon for at Least $80M 74 comments
netbuzz writes "Fresh off agreeing to pay Sprint Nextel $80 million earlier this month, Vonage has now agreed to compensate Verizon at least $80 million to settle their patent dispute, and the total could hit $117 million depending on the outcome of appeals Vonage has pending. 'If Vonage wins rehearing on either the '574 or '711 patent or if the injunction is vacated as to the '574 or '711 patent, Vonage will pay Verizon $80 million. If Vonage does not win rehearing on either the '574 or '711 patent, or if the stay is lifted reinstating the injunction, Vonage will pay Verizon $117.5 million.' And, of course, don't forget AT&T just recently opened charges against the company as well."
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Makes sense for Sprint (Score:4, Insightful)
As shady as Vonage is... (Score:2)
Next up: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
This packet from Amazon and this packet from Google, they get through very easily. But this packet, from fucktimewarner.org, it gets routed a little differently..... *riiiiiiiiiiiiiiip*
Next up: Bankruptcy (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of You Have No Idea (Score:2)
The SIP protocol offers many novel ways to communicate. The least of which is a simple phone call. In one way, it is vonage's fault for choosing to stick to dumb phone call only because there were many neat possibilities awaiting consumers in SIP.
I fear for all of the smaller business voip/ISP outfits now that the first domino has fallen.
Re:Many of You Have No Idea (Score:4, Informative)
The SIP protocol also lets anybody play without paying for anything (except for generic network service).
With SIP the ONLY thing Vonage has to sell that can't be had for free is bridging to the public switched telephone network. Which is what those patents are about.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
This is an immediate consequence of allowing people who own the infrastructure to sell services on that infrastructure. The current state of affairs with respect to the ILECs/CLECs is an obvious example. I know that AT&T put my Speakeasy service on low priority because they weren't seeing much money from it. My line problem went unfixed for about a week before they got around to it.
A strict separation between
Massive insider trading Vonage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who were all those traders with inside information? And will anything be done about them? You so rarely hear about prosecutions for insider trading...
Date Open High Low Close Volume Adj Close*
today 1.56 2.70 1.41 2.57 34,993,632 2.57
5-Oct-07 1.05 1.23 1.02 1.15 4,172,700 1.15
4-Oct-07 1.00 1.05 0.98 1.03 2,463,000 1.03
3-Oct-07 1.00 1.01 0.97 1.01 1,053,700 1.01
2-Oct-07 0.99 1.03 0.96 0.98 1,662,100 0.98
1-Oct-07 1.03 1.03 0.96 0.96 1,295,600 0.96
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=VG&t=5d [yahoo.com]
Re:Massive insider trading Vonage? (Score:4, Informative)
Especially if the company goes from looking dead in the water to having a decent chance at continuing to function. SCO would have done the same thing if for some reason the judge had ruled that they owned the UNIX copyrights.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I think your point about the low price is good, but you ignore the point about volume that the parent made. Since the price increase went hand-in-hand with a high volume of trading, I would say that the evidence points more toward insider trading t
Re: (Score:2)
As AC said, since this was hardly unpredictable, vonage was going to have to make a settlement if they wanted to stay in business. The activity on a stock doesn't say anything about the number of people buying or selling, just the number of shares being exchanged. It could be three people buying and selling, or it could be 3 million doing so.
The more likely explanation is that somebody
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, now that this is out of the way.. (Score:2, Interesting)
This could be a win for Sprint/Nextel customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, I get to use my Sprint phone over Vonage at home, and over Sprint cellular when I take it with me. Put multiple docks in and have them have a nice little menu system to choose the phone to go through (in case three family members are home and have docked their phones). I can call out through my wife's if mine is already being used by something else dialing out.
Vonage could be a foot in the door to VoIP linkage to Sprint's system. Might seem a longshot, but there's been longer shots before...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't work for T-Mobile, I've just been a very satisfied customer for the las
Re: (Score:2)
Does the @Home service work with a prepaid SIM card?
Dinner is on me (Score:2)
And you wanna know what originally got me interested in this stock? Reading the article on slashdot about Vonage getting sued.
HAHA!
Vonage isn't a service (Score:4, Interesting)
An exact parallel to this would be delivering IP video to cable customers through their cable modem. You buy a little box which takes the video data stream and outputs a video signal. Then the cable customer could drop television service in favor of this new service. Except in order to get the video programming the provider is a cable subscriber. So the cable company would get to be both the network and the wholesaler of the programming. Since the programming would be almost free (1 cable subscriber bill) it should make tons of money, right?
If the above seems like a clever idea to you, I've got another one. Have a little cart from which you sell hamburgers. You can take the cart around to people on the street so they don't have to drive or walk as far. In order to get these hamburgers you just work out a bulk purchase plan from McDonalds and resell them from your little cart. The idea would be to get McDonalds to agree to a such a low price that you could make money on this.
How long do you think such buy-bulk-services-for-resale schemes can go on? Sooner or later if you treat your supplier as a competitor your supplier is either (a) going to shut down or (b) shut your service off. Either is death to the buy-in-bulk reseller.
Sure, you can say that the infrastructure (or the hamburgers) should be public and any retailer should be able to use this infrastructure to compete with each other. That's fine now that it exists. But in order to get that first hamburger (or telephone switch) it was necessary to make a risky investment. Governments are not in the business of making risky investments. They either invest in sure things or they line up someone else to get the privilege of making the investment. We wouldn't have the phone system we have today if it was up to the government in 1900 to build it. They would have waited until 1950 to do it and then where do you think the US would be?
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. The infrastructure will still be there, and still be worth something, so somebody will buy it and Vonage will use it. Hell, maybe Vonage will end up
So what happens to the next vonage? (Score:2)
So I assume they are all infringing? I'm amazed a standard like sip came to fruition without anyone noticing these patents looming. And come to think of it, how is skype making the leap to the pstn network without infringing?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, I think any present break in the insanity is merely the eye of the storm, if you will. From here it will probably just go back to how things used to be.
I believe that the patent on those is expired (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Except... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Vonage has saved me approximately $1400 in three years. If they have to raise my rates a few dollars to pay for this settlement, I welcome it just to keep them around.