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Vonage Loses VoIP Case With Verizon
cdrudge writes "A federal jury on Thursday said Vonage Holdings Corp. violated 3 of 5 patents of Verizon Communications Inc. and ordered the upstart Internet-phone company to pay $58m in damages as well as 5.5% in royalty fees per month per customer. Verizon said it would seek an injunction to block Vonage from using its patented technology. The jury did reject Verizon's claim of $200m in damages and that Vonage deliberately violated Verizon's patents. As you might expect, Vonage said it would appeal the decision and seek a stay if an injunction is granted. Judge Claude Hilton set a hearing for March 23 on whether to grant an injunction."
Another win for the little guy! It's always nice when the system works.
Well, you see, this one group of rich guys tried to screw over this other group of rich guys, but the second group of rich guys was like, "Oh no you didn't!" and the first group was like "What're you gonna do about it!" and then the jury said "We find in favor of the rich guys!"
So you see, EVERYTHING is different now. Duh.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Vonage has two plans, unlimited is $25 and 500 minutes is $14. The instant they introduced the 500 minute plan I switched down to it. This includes all of the services (voicemail in particular) that you pay through the nose for with a real phone company.
I cannot even conceive of using 500 minutes in a single month.
I read a few articles on that news this afternoon but they are mainly aimed at the financial aspect of the story. I'm still trying to find what exactly are those patents and what are the larger (if any) implications for VOIP in general. Open Source Software like Asterisk could eventually suffer if Verizon begins a patent war and Vonage was only this first victim.
Traditional carrier are having a hard time adjusting to new technology and they will try anything to keep their old ways to stay relevant. During the last few years this happened in many 'traditional' sectors, music and movies being two of them. In the long run, they will adjust or die but for now all of those dinosaurs are desperate to keep their heads above the water. The crippled patent system is their flotation device...
This quote is from CNN's article on the subject coming from a Verizon lawyer:
"Patents encourage and protect innovations that benefit consumers, create jobs, and keep the economy growing. Verizon's innovations are central to its strategy of building the best communications networks in the world,"
Enough said!
"The infringed patents cover a method for translating calls between an Internet network and the standard telephone network, call-waiting features and wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, handsets. Vonage was cleared of infringing two patents related to billing systems designed to prevent fraud."
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&s
Ideal:
Person A has a brilliant, rare idea. Person A invests years in refining and expanding said idea. Person A goes out and patents said idea. Person A opens a business with said idea, reaping customer praise and financial reward.
The patent has encouraged creativity and expanded the market.
Reality:
Person A has a somewhat obvious idea. Companys B, C, D, and E without investing in refining or developing the idea run out and patent said idea. Patent is granted to Company B (and sometimes C,D,and E too). Company B sits on patent, preventing anyone else from opening said business in order to protect the large profit margins on their current offering. 15 years later Company B sells the rights to said patent to Clearinghouse F. Clearinghouse F takes the broadest possible view of said patent, and sues everyone in the business. Years of fun in courthouse G ensues.
The patent has prevented the use of the idea or object patented, and has been used to bleed money from companies who do produce things.
The ______ Agenda
I cannot even conceive of using 500 minutes in a single month.
/.er ;)
Spoken like a true
20 whole minutes on the phone per day? Unthinkable, why would the guy I order pizza from need to talk to me anywhere near that much?
And really, who else do we call?
Maybe some of these?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1) incoming calls don't come out the the 500 bucket.
2) calls to toll free numbers don't come out of the 500 bucket.
3) calls to Vonage customers don't come out of the 500 bucket.
It's harder to burn through 500 Vonage minutes than one would think.
Look at these patents:
t ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6137869.PN.&OS=PN/6137869&RS= PN/6137869
t ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6104711.PN.&OS=PN/6104711&RS= PN/6104711
t ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6282574.PN.&OS=PN/6282574&RS= PN/6282574
t ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6298062.PN.&OS=PN/6298062&RS= PN/6298062
t ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6359880.PN.&OS=PN/6359880&RS= PN/6359880
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fne
So basically any VOIP system utilizing a database to authenticate callers and bill them for usage is infringement. Amazing.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fne
VOIP DNS.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fne
Same.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fne
Voice mail / call waiting / call forwarding I assume. Now this is proprietary because it's been ported to VOIP systems?
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fne
This looks more applicable to wireless networks; I wonder how it applied in this case.
I'm paying a comparable amount through Vitelity and I've been quite happy with the service. $1.49/mo. for each DID, 1.39 cents/min/channel outbound, and 1.1 cents/min/channel inbound. It's very much an ala carte service - you can order as many DIDs as you want for a single account, and if you want CNAM lookups (caller ID), you pay for them on a per-use basis (something like 2 cents/lookup IIRC). Most importantly for me, they actively support and welcome customers running their own PBX boxes (Asterisk , etc.) and they will let you have as many simultaneously active calls as your bandwidth will support.
I've had no problems with the service, and they were very helpful in porting my previous Vonage number over. They do offer a few other plans, but the ala carte offering worked best for me.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I don't know why my parent post got modded as a troll as they are all valid points. Perhaps I did not cite my references.
As someone mentioned earlier, here are the patent numbers: 6137869 [billing algorithm for voip], 6104711 [dns for voip],6282574 [dns for voip], 6298062 [conversion of PSTN signals to IP packets and providing PSTN services over IP networks], 6359880 [Wireless VOIP router]. I am not going to link these to the patent office because it's tedious, but you can look them up for yourself.
Net2Phone, launched their VOIP services back in 1997. In order to establish said services they implemented most if not all of the above claimed patents and did so before most of the patent applications were filed. The only two which were filed before the service was launched were the first two patents in the above list and they are certainly not unique and unobvious. Billing for VOIP services? Pretty obvious since they announced their pay service in 1995 which was 2 years prior to the patent application. The second one was simply DNS extended to provide things like caller ID. Not exactly ground breaking but this is perhaps the only leverage they may have IF nobody else was providing VOIP services at the time or prior to. That is a big IF because it is likely many of the telcos were already using something similar for digital cell phone networks such as GSM (which is also a packet network created around 1993).
Of course there is also the Network Voice Protocol which was the first implementation of VOIP invented in 1973 which preceded all the patents. My point is, they really don't have much of a case with these patents.