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Vonage Goes To Court III - The AT&T Suit
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 19, 2007 11:09 PM
from the this-story-is-getting-old dept.
from the this-story-is-getting-old dept.
kickabear writes "AT&T has filed a lawsuit against Vonage, claiming patent infringement. This is the third major lawsuit to have been brought against Vonage by a major phone company. Vonage lost the previous two lawsuits, brought by Sprint-Nextel and Verizon. How much more money can Vonage afford to give away? How can Vonage educate a jury on prior art? 'It said in a filing to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that AT&T is seeking injunctive relief, compensatory and treble damages and attorneys' fees in unspecified amounts. Vonage said the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin on October 17.'"
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Prior Art On Verizon Patents 170 comments
greenbird sends in word that Techdirt has up information from Daniel Berninger documenting prior art in the Verizon patents being used to destroy Vonage. "...due to the fun way the patent system works, introducing that kind of prior art to the USPTO for it to review the validity of Verizon's VoIP patents will take quite a bit of time and effort — much longer than Vonage has to fight Verizon in court." From Berninger's note: "In particular, the claims in both patents were anticipated by open standards assembled by the VoIP Forum (H.323) in 1996 and published in January 1997 with the participation of members from Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, and VocalTec Communications, among others... The Eric Voit patent applications reflect, in particular, contributions made by VocalTec Communication to the VoIP Forum during 1996 and formally published at the same time as a separate document."
[+]
Technology: Vonage and Verizon — Prepare for Round 2 49 comments
According to the New York Times, Vonage is preparing to take it's case back down to the lower courts for a retrial of the lawsuit against them from Verizon. Their hope is that with newer approaches set forth by the supreme court that the lower courts will be able to decide whether Verizon's patent(s) are ordinary/obvious or deserve patent protection. I wonder if this time it will be more obvious to the courts that Verizon's patents aren't so original?
[+]
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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surprisationingness (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple solution (Score:4, Funny)
If (court_fines > available_cash) then
# increase fees paid by customers
(monthly_subscription_fee = monthly_subscription_fee * 1.25)
end
Some code would of course be responsible to check whether customers are beginning to jump ship after say a month.
Guys, they will survive this one.
Parent
Patent # (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Patent # (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Patent # (Score:4, Interesting)
So AT&T completely owns VOIP? That seems pretty damn broad to me, or am I missing that the patent is somehow more narrow than that?
Parent
can't beat em, sue em! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:can't beat em, sue em! (Score:4, Interesting)
The US dollar has fallen to almost half it's value compared to the Swedish Krona in a few years. It's falling compared to other economies too.
To cut the losses, both economical and trust-wise it's time for a complete rebuild of the legal system regarding property rights and estimation of value loss. Suing people for ridiculous amounts of money won't help either. Software patents should be declared invalid - retroactively so that all court rulings regarding software patent breaks can be invalidated.
And the practice of being able to pick patent fees from the users of a technology that has a certain patent is completely hopeless. If anybody should be held responsible it's the manufacturer - not the user. If the manufacturer is in a foreign country - use the customs office to take care of the problem for all future cases.
Especially software patents are bad - because they often are applied to a certain detail, and the patents should have been dismissed as obvious. The effort to write code may be great for one programmer but made on the fly by another without even realizing that the first programmer has gotten a patent for the solution. Who is to blame? Who is responsible? Is it really "protection of assets" going on or is it just a spanner in the works of development and ultimately decreases the ability of the country to compete on the international market?
What most rulings in cases regarding software patents fails to take into account is that software is a volatile international thing - almost like the air we breathe or the water we drink - and it has no boundaries. (unless you build a really great firewall or resort to computers only able to run a nationally assigned OS and programming language). Each case where a patent software is granted is another nail in the coffin for development.
The use of patents forces you to look back all the time to make sure nobody infringes on your patent or tries to make it invalid. The current economic lifespan of a patent should be reduced to 3 to 4 years after which it only causes harm. If less effort is put into patents and more into development you will see a lot of more development done.
Parent
As a Vonage Customer... (Score:4, Funny)
Patents are Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Stories like this are really starting to annoy me. So may times we hear that a company that is just doing good businees gets sued into obivion for no real good reason.
As I'm going through patent hell myself right now, I've come to the conclusion that patents solely exist to stifle and restrict innovation. They no longer protect the inventor in any way. The only people getting rich off of patents are the lawyers.
Patents have outlived their usefullness and the entire system should be scrapped.
Re:Patents are Evil (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to ten years ago.
Parent
Re:Patents are Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is the requirement to maintain a patent. Companies seem to require no active use and no context definition for a given patent. I think reform would solve the problem, if it could include certain division of patenting, such as, into particular markets for requiring patent claims to specify rather detailed scenarios of use. Then in 10 years, if some new company comes along and uses the same technology for entirely different purposes, or in a different market, then the patent wouldn't apply to them.
Furthermore, if a company is awarded in any way shape or form a kind of monopoly (such as cable companies or telephone companies awarded "natural" monopolies due to the practical realities of running cables and pipes) then they should forfeit any and all patent rights until said monopoly is relinquished. Perhaps there could be some context rules for that as well. Say, if AT&T has any natural monopolies to provided internet access then any patents used for the purpose of doing business over the internet should be forfeit in return for the huge gift of that monopoly.
These or other ideas come and go. It's too bad nobody really cares besides the minorities that actually understand and see the impact. The masses, the ones who actually vote, never hear of this and thusly, don't care. Because the voters don't care, the politicians don't bother to address it for their resumé a.k.a. platform, because it's simply bad marketing. Even if it was a great and intelligent move, too many potential voters would see it as not in their interests and not vote. This is why politicians do such strange things. They are motivated to keep their jobs. Wouldn't you be?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the way the system was originally set up, they weren't supposed to be concerned about that. The idea was that individuals (from all walks of life) would serve a term in Congress, go back to whatever it was they did prior to that, and then live under the laws they made. It was a natural negative feedback loop, and it was brilliant: chalk up another one for the Founders. Then the idea of a "career politician" or a "professional politician" came i
skunks (Score:5, Interesting)
We need the People's ubiquitous wireless mesh network, something we can use for voice and data and just "route around" the current information bottlenecks, which are the big telcos with the entrenched monopoly mindset and WAY too much power in the legislative process. Now watch these assholes gobble up more of the so called publics airwaves in the next spectrum auction, so they can lock in more control and profits. Screw it, they should be disallowed from even bidding, it should just be mandated it is for the creation of the universal wireless network, something needing not much at all in the way of plutocratic middlemen companies and their precious stolen infrastructure.
Strike three (Score:3)
Vonage has had two chances to frame a defense that would be persuasive to a judge and jury - and failed in both. The reasonable conclusion is that it doesn't have a defense.
Re: (Score:2)
make sure they don't have a defense.
Well, you do make a logical point (Score:3, Insightful)
You assume that they have not been paid off to make sure they don't have a defense.
Right. Because every time a court decision doesn't go the way we like, it must mean someone was bribed. I see the logic.
They're back against the wall (Score:4, Interesting)
lol (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Blood in the water (Score:4, Insightful)
Vonage is no longer a viable company. They are just a lump of cash, hemorrhaging out to anyone who looks at them crossly. Right now the game is for the tens/hundreds of millions of dollars Vonage has in cash. But that's just the appetizer; the real prize is the millions of Vonage customers who can be converted over to a "Triple Play" package.
Re:Blood in the water (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I'm cheering for Google for my first time (Score:4, Insightful)
Alternatives to Vonage (Score:2)
Collusion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can't Vonage sue Verizon, Sprint and AT&T for collusion and conspiracy under the RICO act or some other suitable anti-competition law?
Surely there's proof!
Not really anything new (Score:4, Interesting)