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Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround
drachenfyre writes "It looks like Vonage has no workaround for their recent patent infringements. This means if a permanent stay isn't granted it is likely that it will be the end of the line for Vonage. What will happen if millions of phone customers suddenly lose their service? Their own filing to the court stated 'While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.'"
Welcome to the patent quagmire. The whole progress of industry will become a stalemate if this goes on.
End the patent nonesense now!
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
Woohoo woo hoo hoo!
People do stupid things.
Like infringing on patents for phone service.
so say goodbye to vonage.
The Dying phone company.
Unlimited lawsuits in the US and Canada.
24.99 Million/month (in lawsuits and fees)
Vonage
Visit vonage.com/screwed or 1-800-2GET-OUT
(Parody of This Commercial)
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Who will Verizon go after next? Skypeout?
... Verizon sucks and I won't be using their services.
Now millions of people will have to turn to the existing vampiric phone services
I've been very happy with Vonage, does anyone know a good alternative?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Millions of people will be inconvenienced by patent enforcement.
What the patent that they are violating, and what does it cover? If it's not something that can be worked around, then what about other VOIP systems.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
My best guess:
1) Vonage up the service cost to a level that Verizon can compete at and pay a licensing fee. Problem Verizon have them over a barrel and could pretty much demand what they want, forcing the operation costs too high - putting them out of business.
2) Verizon buy out Vonage at a reduced cost. There's a bunch of people subscribed to Vonage. Even if the fees go up and a chunk stay, that's an easy market capture strategy. Infrastructure is in place etc. Verizon would then jack up the service cost.
3) A third party buy out Vonage. Same problem, but now 1) and 2) are combined.
4) Vonage get their stay. The court case goes on for a few years. Vonage's only argument is that 'it will put us out of business'. They go out of business anyway due to legal fees.
There's plenty of more senarios, but in all cases the service bill will go up. So I need to read my subscription agreement and get ready to ditch the service when the bills start to go up. I wonder if there's a class action lawsuit here for deceiving the customer about ownership of the technology. I'm thinking along the lines of something like - you sub-lease office space, but then get kicked out as the primary leaseholders were not paying their rent to the landlord, also they did not have permission to sub-lease to you. So now you have no office and have lost other cash etc. Any lawyers care to comment?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I've seen various assertions that there is quite good prior art against at least some of the patents in question. Have they yet gone down that road?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They did have one backup plan
Regardless, farewell Vonage. It was nice knowing thee.
I realise theres some deep seated hatred for the old telcos in the USA (something which I don't really understand not being american) but if people want to give these old telcos the finger and go with a relatively immature technology such as a VOIP phone install then unfortunately these things will happen , whether it be technological or legal issues. I'm afraid my sympathy is limited. These people wanted something cheap or free and they might get burnt. Well tough.
I can almost guarantee that Verizon will wait until Vonage hits a record low in their shares and then offer to buy. This would solve Vonage's customer problems, and the patent issue would naturally go away.
I've been using vonage for 9 months now, service has been pretty good... not good enough to run a business on (like the commercials suggest.) But overall I've been happy with the $20/month deal. Previously I was paying $60-$75/month with Bell Canada, not even a year and I've saved a lot of money. But it has me wondering.. this is all about a patent in the united states, it probably doesn't mean much for the vonage in Canada except that the technology that makes the vonage system work is so intertwined between the two countries that I'll be paying $50/month pretty soon, when whichever competitor gobbles up vonage for the lowest bid.
Perhaps somebody can clarify something for me. Obviously I understand how sell a product (i.e., a computer, a car, software, etc.) that contains somebody's patented technology without their permission, you would be liable of infringing their patents. But until this Vonage situation, I was under the impression that this didn't apply to services. Though, now that I think about it, the whole Amazon one-click fiasco is probably a similar problem. But if Verizon has patented some sort of interconnection device/method between VoIP and the PSTN, this means that nobody can perform such an action without a license from Verizon, regardless of whether or not they sell the hardware to accomplish it?
The whole thing just seems incredibly ridiculous. Obviously that's part of the problem and why we need patent reform, but it's really amazed me that a company can patent something and somehow prevent somebody else from making use of similar technology/methods when they don't in fact sell the technology/methods to others. It'd be one thing if Verizon sold the hardware or software that accomplished this feat, but to merely USE it would seem to me to not violate a patent. I know I'm mistaken, but I'd appreciate a good explanation of how this can be.
. . . but the game will stay the same. That big ole user base is worth too much money to too many people to have it dissolved. I suspect that Verizon will try to forge a settlement which involves some large part of said users.
Huzzah for competition.
This sucks. I have been completely satisfied with my Vonage service. It is far superior to any other phone service I have ever had. The ability to have my voicemails delivered as email has been fantastic. The price has been fantastic. The Quality of Service has been fantastic.
And now it's all going away.
That sucks.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
...from the start. After all, that's what I'd say if I were in their position. Research in Motion talked about a workaround during the latter stage of its legal woes with NPT Inc. But in the end they paid six hundred extra-large ones (aka millions) to make NTP go away. So we'll never know if they really had a workaround of any sort (I suspect they never did, but what do I know). Given that Vonage has never made money, they're in no position to do what RIM did to solve this issue. So they're screwed plain and simple.
.... Oh wait! They already are.
As for somebody buying them out..... Worst idea EVAH! Sure you get a customer base, but who would risk it? Verizon won't as they're going to pick up some customers no matter what if Vonage goes tits up. Anybody else will simply inherit Vonage's issues. So It seems more reasonable that they are going to die a slow death.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Now shutup...
The patents in question have to do with routing the calls to a conventional phone network if I remember right. How is it that Vonage is violating these patents, and can't find a workaround, while there are other VOIP services out there that do the exact same thing? How are those other services not violating the same patents? Or are they but they just haven't been sued yet? Cause if Vonage goes under I'd switch to another VOIP provider but I don't want to keep switching as each one gets sued out of existence.
go ahead, call for Qwest One-Flex, Asterisk, Speakeasy, whomever. I'm sure they'll transfer your number.
it's not like Vonage customers will never be able to use a phone again in their lives....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If this is a legitimate patent, then Verizon was right to enforce it, and it will only help innovation in the long run, by continuing the legal tradition of protecting new ideas. And the court decisions suggest that it was a legitimate patent.
Wrong. Even assuming Verizon has patented a novel idea (which is highly in question), they DID NOTHING with that patent except sit on it, thus transforming it into a submarine patent, which is only used to extract peanalties from ANOTHER COMPANY that ACTUALLY HAD THE BALLS to pursue the idea.
This is the whole problem with the patent situation. While patents are a good idea on paper, they are not in practice. This is because, basically, if you are granted a patent your best busines case IS TO NOT DEVELOP IT. It is far less risky and more cost-effeftive, to just sit on it for a few years until some unlocky company unknowingly creates a successful business around it - then sue the pants off them.
Patents do not encourage innovation at all - all they do is stifle it. Patent reform is desperatly needed. Companies should not be allowed to sit on a patent. The way things SHOULD procced is this:
Company / person has idea. File patent application.
Patent is reviewed and approved. Patent enters implementation phase, which is some fixed period of time during which the idea is allowed to be brought to market by the company / person. Maybe 1 year?
Implementation phase complete. Patent office then reviews patent AND evidence of implementation. If the company / person HAS NOT brought patent to market, then the patent is REJECTED and any and all ideas are now public domain. If they HAVE, then the patent is granted as par. current patent term length, whatever that is (I think it's 10 years?).
I wonder what happens when and if Verizon goes after the cable companies. Here in NYC Time Warner and Cablevision push their "Triple Play" packages a great deal. That is TV, Internet, and VOIP phone service for those who haven't seen this. With Verizon rolling out FIOS, I imagine the cable companies can not be happy about the phone company invading their tv domain, just as the tv company invaded Verizon's phone domain. Will these companies throw down and fight it out in court or will Verizon make nice and license the technology for a song and let the big media comglomerates continue as before.
If Verizon gives cheap licensing to others is Vonage not entitled to the same deal? Lots of questions still to be answered I believe.
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hoo!
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hoo!
Such that, if you don't make reasonable progress bringing you idea to life then you forfeit protection. I think this is reasonable since you do have to build the darn thing to get a patent. Current you only have the describe the thing in legal speak.
If this patent really is so broad that it affects all VoIP and there's no possible work-around, then this sounds to me like an antitrust suit waiting to happen.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I had SunRocket for about a year. Really lousy voice quality. I would call their India call centers who told me (with a bad imitation of an American accent) they would fix the problem this time. It never got fixed. Since I hardly use my phone I decided to put up with it for awhile. My year with SR just ran out and I signed up with ViaTalk. Huge improvement in sound quality. And they will let you use your own VOIP adapter (I have a Linksys PAP2T-NA) instead of that crappy Gizmo SR saddles you with.
I browse at +3, so maybe I missed a comment thread regarding this, but since Vonage does VoIP - why couldn't they just move their operations out of the US like what Kazaa was doing when they were pursued by the RIAA?
-R
I've had Vonage for about 2 years now and love it. I've never had any problems with my service and have saved a huge amount of money. It's absurd that Verizon can patent something so basic as translating calls between the internet and a regular phone system, it sounds pretty fucking obvious to me. If Verizon does manage to kill off Vonage I am sure they will start going after the other VOIP providers until they have monopolized the market. I will never give Verizon another penny of my money.
In the face of a patent infringement lawsuit from Sprint, they might just sell themselves to the company instead. The anticipated timing of such an announcement? April 24, when the hearing on the stay is set to occur. The slide in stock price definitely makes Vonage an attractive target for acquisition just for the customer base and Sprint has deep pockets to duke this thing out with.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
supposing the worst, (Vonage dies or is given to Verizon), can the hardware be salvaged for some other use?
...
I've got the Linksys RTP300 box. If i understand correctly, the firmware has been 'updated' by Vonage to work only with Vonage service
It would be really cool if Vonage could, as a last act, stuff it with a linux kernel and Asterix.
Since I don't expect that to happen, is it possible to do that myself?
Creativity is being crushed just because people are crying "I thought of it first!". There is always a better way to do something, unfortunately you have to hire lawyers just to make sure you don't step on anyones toes. Take a look at the ridiculuos prices I found in a 5 minute google search.. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/patent_cost.html
In that video go 25 minutes into it. RMS explains how it's near impossible to avoid infringing patents.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
I twitched every time I heard "woo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo" in those incessant commercials. Very annoying. A hint to people in the marketing industry: if your advertisements are annoying, I'm not going to buy your product or service.
The problem is that Vonage was using Verizon's own DSL lines to compete with them and not paying Verizon (or anybody else) as a supplier. General rule about competition is you better have your own supplier, independent of your competitors. Trying to go into business leeching on your competitor is not a smart strategy.
... often nothing at all.
Leeching? You see, Vonage (and all the other sell-you-a-box VOIP folks) are utterly dependent on their customer having a broadband Internet connection now from someone that competes with their service. OK, fine. But then on the back end of the call they are also dependent on the telephone carrier to deliver the call at either a greatly reduced rate or free depending on the infrastructure.
So, for Verizon it was providing the DSL (or whatever) connection for a substantial portion of Vonage's customers and also providing the telephone network to complete the call. And, for being involved on both ends of the call they got
Look, you can set up a burger stand outside a McDonalds and sell hamburgers you buy at McDonalds at a quantity discount - but don't be surprised when McDonalds finds a way to either cut you off or raise the price so you can't compete. This is exactly what is happening with Vonage - Verizon found a way to cut them off. The other VOIP services are either too small or next in line for the same sort of treatment. There is nothing that says Verizon has to be a supplier to their competition.
And Vonage was doomed from day one. To build a business that depends on your competitor not noticing you are stealing customers away while at the same time using their infrastructure to service your customers is interesting. It is likely just a Ponzi scheme that the principals knew would collapse eventually but allowed them to get rich while it lasted.
I pay $16 a month for my Vonage service. Can those companies offer similar prices? Are they available in my area (West coast US)?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
MOD UP - Informative
It answers the question
Great idea, but sometimes it takes more than a year to take a product to market. Sure it shouldn't take more than a year for a one click patent to come into use, but if you discover cold fusion, well it might take some time to get the funding and actually build a state of the art first ever cold fusion power plant.
Should they really lose their patent after spending billions of dollars?
What kind of research will this encourage?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If there is no other way to implement VOIP, then is the patent even valid? It would seem to me that if you want to perform some task, and there is exactly one way to accomplish that task, that the solution is clear and obvious.
But obviousness is supposed to invalidate a patent, isn't it?
Then again, I guess that hasn't exactly been the standard that the patent office uses anymore, is it?
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
I'm surprised that no one seems to be considering the possibility that Vonage would say this to give themselves an easier time getting a permanent stay granted.
Steps to fight patent infringement:
1. Get a temporary stay granted to buy time to investigate the viability of different workarounds.
2. Discover certain workarounds and begin R&D to implement them. This is to hedge against the possibility of a court loss.
3. Say "It's impossible!" and seek a permanent stay. You're already in court, at this point the money is trivial vs. reimplementing your whole system.
4. If the permanent stay isn't granted, seek a settlement. Draw this out as long as possible.
5. If the settlement costs less than the redeployment of your entire network, do it.
6. If not, by now it is a few years later and your new technology is ready to roll out.
What reason would the judge have to grant a permanent stay if Vonage said "Well, yeah, we have a workaround, but it would cost a lot less if we could just get a permanent stay granted, what do you say?"
Am I the only one who sees this as a business ploy? I predict that Verizon will make Vonage squirm, let their stock get as low as possible, and then buy them out.
No one else will touch Vonage due to their legal trouble, except Verizon who holds all the cards. Verizon can easily aquire 2.2 million customers cheap.
Extortion, what?
Boo hoo Boo hoo hoo!
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
don't know, frankly, I'm a fan of the old CO-powered wireline myself, haven't checked voip out in detail for myself. but you can check the websites and see. lots of options out there, and outfits that have a different network than vonage did could well have lower rates.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
(One of) The tragedy here is that the patent system is supposed to reward innovators in exchange for the recording and propagation of their idea. Pre-patent times, inventors (allegedly, I don't know the actual history) would secret away their creations, afraid that it'd be copied. Theoretically, many inventions were lost wit the death of their creator, only to be reinvented by someone else. Publication and recording is part of getting a patent, with one of the goals being that we don't spend ingenuity reinventing the wheel.
If no one is consulting these patent records for how to solve a problem, we're not achieving a lot of the intended goal.
Qmunicate
Ayalogic.com
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
(Notice they change their name every couple years despite being a monopoly.)
Moving into my new house, I try to get DSL service (which I already had at my old house). I call a full 6 weeks ahead to make sure. Cable modem was not released in our area yet, so there was only one option. The install date is 7 1/2 weeks later. I decide we can live without internet for a week and a half.
They show up and say it's impossible. I'm too far from the CO. Now, mind you, my next door neighbor has DSL and he is 50 FEET FARTHER from the CO. But they don't care about that.
After 10 more months and a few calls to the California Public Utilities Commission, I finally get my DSL and for the price at which I had it previously. Our phone bill is wrong EVERY MONTH FOR THE NEXT 18 MONTHS with installation fees and early termination fees over and over again. My wife spends 2 hours a month correcting the phone bill.
For my business, I decide to get 714-PROD4ME since I called it and it's out of service. Cool! First, they say I can't get it because it's assigned to a residential area (even though it's not in use). It just so happens that one of my employees lives in that area, so I have him get it as a second line residentially (just to get the number), but they tell him it's "attached" to the neighboring CO AND IT CAN'T BE TRANSFERRED (even though I know lots of people that have), so he gets it as a forwarding number to our business for $18/month. Not too bad.
Then, we try to transfer it to the business, because once you have a number, according to the law they MUST let you keep that number. So they come up with excuses like it can't be transferred from residential to business, but we are on the phone together and he says it's OK. Then they say that since it's a forwarding number, it can't be transferred to a "normal account". Then they say that it will cost $42/month to transfer it to a business number and $42/month minimum for the number it transfers to. Then they say that I can't get Call Busy Rollover on that number (which, of course, I need) BECAUSE THE NUMBER HAS ALREADY BEEN FORWARDED. Nevermind that I have worked at lots of places with P/S/A where they can do this just fine.
I finally switch to Vonage lines, because they are cheaper for more lines and they don't put me through this kind of nonsense. Then P/S/A won't transfer my number to Vonage, saying that only residential and business numbers can be transferred, not "forwarding" numbers. Then they tell me that for only $280 installation and $87/month (for at least one month), I could set up a "virtual office" in the area where the number resides and they could transfer it to that. I said, "You WILL transfer the number to Vonage for free now, or you will do it for free after I call the CPUC and file a complaint." They say that it's technically impossible, it can't be done unless I pay them over $350.
I file a complaint online with the PUC (about 5 minutes) and the number transfers 2 BUSINESS DAYS LATER. Then they waste the time writing me 3 physical letters (one personalized non-boilerplate), 4 e-mails and 2 phone calls (one a customer satisfaction survey about my experience with P/S/A ?!?), wasting at least 20 manhours when they could have just done it.
There you go, my foreign brothers, THAT is why people hate the monopoly phone companies...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day?
come on, that's retarded. it's the big companies who end up getting the patents. patents keep big companies owning ideas so we can't implement them. verizon's only need for this patent is to keep out competition. anything which can be done with computers (like voip/pots interfacing) can be implemented quickly. tech startups never need years of state supported monopoly to make money.
i think many patent supporting techies think they'll be the first to patent something which can used to leverage loot from some big company. i think the odds of winning this lottery are pretty low considering the resources (lawyers) at the disposal of big companies around the world.
fear is the mind killer
I haven't heard anything about a patent re-examination. Has Vonage requested that? Has the patent office really re-affirmed the validity of these apparently overbroad patents? If not, why didn't Vonage ask for a stay (preferably before the verdict) so the patent office could re-examine the patents? Didn't they learn anything from the Blackberry case?
I have been a Vonage customer for over 3 years and am immesely satisfied with the service. If Verizon were to prevail in court, I would never forgive them and cease using their services permanently. I don't even pretend to understand what the patents are that they are trying to enforce but shutting down an entire company through litigation smacks of anti-competitive behavior.
M
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
I don't see anyone that has metioned that this is in fact an opportunity for someone. Just as Unisys decided to assert their gif patent when it was just a few years from expiring, someone out there could save their bacon. Approach them, license it cheap. Profit. Seldom do you have a captive market for a product like this one.
Pretty sure I called them a few days ago...and it seems like they are still taking new customers. I asked about pricing and whatnot and they never mentioned not being able to apply any new customers.
involving duct tape, and a massive array of conventional telephone receivers.
!#&*
no one? really?
As a Vonage subscriber this deeply saddens me. Hopefully some resolution surfaces before all their customer base transfers to other carriers. That would suck.
Boo-hoo, oo-oo-oo
If you post it, they will read.
Wow. And I thought that a Comcast tech cussing me out in front of my 8 and 5 year-old nieces was bad...
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I guess I'll call Verizon and ask them for their local phone options. I'm assuming that since they're going to cause the interruption in Vonage service here in rural Canada that they're prepared to offer a similar service.
The Good Friar
Take two companies in the same market using what turns out to be the same technology in the same way and low and behold it's the shitty company who comes out on top.
All Hail Our Shitty Overlords.
I would never have said that before reading the article but this tells a lot:
"Vonage, which has around 2.2 million customers, says that it loses about 2.5% of its customers a month, or about 650,000 a year. That's why it is imperative to add new customers constantly, the company has argued."
No matter how many slashdotter are happy with their vonage service, if they are loosing 2.5% of existing customers a month, this can only mean that the service is just not good enough. Or at least it seems to me... To be fair I would be curious to see how other phone companies numbers...
So if they are keeping themselve on life support with constant influx of new users, thanks to their clever ads, I dont think this could last forever, even if Verizon was not pushing them over the grave....
Its all about service.
who-ho who-
If ConEd were found to be infringing upon a patent, would a judge shut them down and plunge New York City into darkness? If not, then what is the difference between that and shutting down Vonage, effectively removing a basic utility from its customers? Sure, they can change providers, but not quickly and easily. It would, in effect, be favoring the greed of Verizon over the general public interest, which is something I definitely have heard courts hesitate to do in the past. Why not this one too?
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Ain't it the truth...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I haven't had any major problems with ILECs (well, actually, I guess I did, since I received multiple bills from the ILEC after switching to the CLEC, but that pales in comparison to PRMan's experience). For me, the reason that I dislike U.S. telcos is that they're so stuck on old technology and charging high rates that they refuse to adopt new technologies that lower costs (frankly, I'm surprised that Verizon offers VoiceWing--that's not typical of an ILEC). The big thing going on now in carrier-land is switching from T1 circuits to metro Ethernet circuits--and the telcos are whining that "Ethernet isn't a high-margin service like T1s are" (in other words, they make a crapload of profit off of T1s but not nearly as much off of Ethernet (Ethernet is WAY cheaper to build/deploy/manage than ATM, for reasons I don't quite understand). But they're being forced to switch because of--gasp--competition and demand by customers. Vonage wasn't perfect, but it was innovating in an area that the telcos refused to pursue (despite holding the patents for it...), thereby forcing prices down and forcing the telcos to enter the VoIP market.
Hard to cencel
Silly, it's because you've been spelling "cancel" wrong. They just don't know what the word "cencel" means.
You: I'd like to cencel my service.
Vonage: You'd like to censor your service?
You: No... cencel
Vonage: You'd like to counsel your service?
You: Cencel! Cencel! I'd like to CENCEL my service.
Vonage: Sir, are you sure you've taken your meds today?
and so on and so forth...
These are the actual claims Vonage has been infringing: registering a wireless telephone terminal in a localized wireless gateway system;
transmitting registration data identifying the gateway system from the localized wireless gateway system to a home location register database through a public packet data communication network;
receiving a request from a calling computer coupled to the public packet data communication network for a call to the wireless telephone terminal;
in response to the request, accessing the home location register database and obtaining a packet data address for the localized wireless gateway system;
using the address to set up a voice communication through the public packet data communication network and the localized wireless gateway system between the calling computer and the wireless telephone terminal.
6. A method as in claim 1, wherein the public packet data communication network is a packet switched network.
7. A method as in claim 6, wherein the packet switched network comprises a system of interlinked data networks using TCP/IP protocol.
8. A method as in claim 7, wherein the system of interlinked data networks comprises the Internet.
If you lose a patent infringement lawsuit, it is because it was found that you KNOWINGLY and WILLFULLY used a patented technology. The solution here is for Vonage to pay Verizon's damages and then license that technology so that they can continue to use it legally, under license.
They could move ops out of the US, and create a bunch of front companies within the US that buys lots of PRI lines from the local LECs, and install their VoIP routing gear locally.
... and the phone company couldn't possibly have any idea what's going on.
The system would still violate the Verizon patent claims. The location of the bridge in the US and the sale of the service to US customers would each give the necessary jurisdiction for the US patents to apply.
Verizon would have one hell of a time untangling that rat's nest.
Trivial: Just follow the routing information for the Vonage customers' telephone numbers to find the bridge.
But then we got a Nortel BCM and I started using the VoIP features in it and put the calls down the fractional. Our Mexico office can now use their VoIP sets not only to call conventionally wired extensions here in the office, but they can also place outbound calls. To the recipient, it looks like the call is coming from our BCM, and therefore a local US number, but actually it's coming from people in Mexico. I've also assigned them US based numbers, so calling a US number will ring them down there, too. In other words, it's completely transparent,
When you enabled these services of your Nortel box you started violating at least the following Vonage patents: 6,282,574, 6,104,711, 6,359,880. (Presuming they stand up to court scrutiny.)
Nortel also violated them by building the box with the feature.
They will if they succeed in this suit, then go after Nortel and its customers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You guessed it on the second try.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A know a lot of the statements on this board will be about how the patent system needs to be overhauled. Many of the comments are rightfully so, while others are based on a misunderstanding of patent law, and others are because of how the PTO grants patents (and because of how the Federal Circuit interprets Patent Law, which often seems to be contrary to the Supreme Court). I would like to point out though, that just because Verizon wins on its patent suit against Vonage, does not mean that the court has to issue an injunction, i.e., shut it down. An injunction is an equitable remedy. It is not automatically issued in a patent suit (which the Fed. Cir. was recently reversed by the Supreme Court, in eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006)). The standard for an injunction is the same in any suit. The court must look at the following factors: (1) irreparable injury, (2) if remedies at law are inadequate (i.e., monetary damages), (3) balance of hardships, and (4) the public interest. While it is true that in most patent cases, a permanent injunction is true, but this case appears to be one where the fourth factor should play a much larger role than normal. if a permanent injunction is granted millions of Vonage customers could be without phone service overnight; this is especially bad considering the emergency uses of a telephone. So this could be a case where the court will not issue a permanent injunction, or will at least give time for Vonage customers to switch over to elsewhere or give Vonage time to implement a non-infringing system. Of course I don't know all the facts of this case (or most of them or even a small portion of them), so this is just a though. Who knows if the court or appellate court will agree with me. On a different note, it is possible that the Supreme Court could in the future take a patent case (which hopefully they will start doing more often) and reverse State Street Bank and possibly get rid of business method patents (which are the cause of much criticism of U.S. patent law). Such a move was hinted at by a minority of the court in a recent case where the Supreme Court decided not to hear a case (said the writ of certiorari was improvidently granted), esentially because the lawyer did not raise the correct objection below (that the subject matter was unpatentable, Section 101) (Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite laboratories, Inc. (2006)).
Verizon cold hold hostage all forms of telephone competition, including Cable telephone services which are packet based and terminate PSTN phone calls.
Vonage is the first salvo.
Please. Please. Please. Somebody somewhere with the resources to fight this has to do so.
I'm no fan of the Cable companies, but this will kill both VoIP and Cable phone competition, leaving only the reincarnated Ma Bell to legally be able to sell phone service that can terminate calls to the PSTN.
As I understand it (and I've been out of patent examining for a few years so I'm quite rusty) TRIPS places a requirement on the US patent system to include some compulsory licensing to enable patented technologies to be exploited.
... that's the point.
e .html) are avoided by early "A"-publication (#1) in the US in common with JPO, EPO, UKPO, etc.. In which case it wouldn't matter if Vonage did do their homework, but I think the compensation requirements are severely reduced under such circumstances.
So, if Verizon were to sit on the tech and not exploit it (a defensive patent) then Vonage could force them to accede to a reasonable license term.
If Vonage simply didn't know about the patent and Verizon are using it themselves (which it seems they are), all Vonage can hope is that they'll get a license. It's tough but that's what "granting a monopoly on exploitation of a novel technology" means - only one company / person goes home with the money.
Of course it's probably better for Verizon to offer a license unless they can take over Vonage's customers for themselves.
It does seem hard on Vonage, but they should have done their research. If they too have made some novel advances in this field then things usually get resolved in some cross-licenseing agreement (involving cloaks and daggers!). So this is the patent system working properly - the innovators win
I've not looked in detail but the patent in question may be one of the so-called submarine patents that used to be a feature of the US system but which now (see eg http://www.meti.go.jp/english/report/data/g400112
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#1 - thus now ungranted patents are published in the US which has led the uninitiated to believe that the USPTO grants everything, commonly the initial filing is published then only the amended claims (which define the monopoly) are re-published.
If you want to cancel your Vonage account without getting a runaround, call their customer service number and (once you get through to a human) say that you're moving right now and you don't have broadband in your new location. They can't escalate that issue -- they can't offer free months of service to coax you to stay; they can't put you through multiple tiers of tech support to try to resolve a service problem. Their customer-service issue tracking system considers "Moving - No Broadband" a dead end. Just...trust me on this one.
Don't tell them where you're "moving" to; that's your own private information. If you give a location, they'll try to find you a new broadband provider. Just say there's no broadband where you're going. End of story. Account canceled.
I fail to understand verizons claims. They say that they are losing customers due to Vonage's abuses of their patents, but don't they need to prove that they are losing money from their own use of their own patents? Not the competing wireline services.
All of these patents date from the Bell Atlantic days, and all of them are from a variety of labs that I personally worked with at the time. The employees of these labs were encouraged to apply for patents for almost any ridiculous thing, and the result is thousands of idiotic, obvious to an expert patents with a ton of prior art.
Bell Atlantic was working with existing VOIP vendors in these same Labs when these patents were filed. They were playing around with Sonus and Cisco gear at the exact same time the patents were filed.
Most of this is in publshed standards. Can Verizon now sue all vendors who implement SIP, why yes they can. Should they be allowed to? No.
Say it together, excessively broad, obvious to an expert, prior art.
Were I the judge, I'd be tempted to rule that way. But then I have a tidbit of common sense. Practical thinking seems to be a handicap for those in the legal professions these days.
It's called a buyout.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Your pay calcuations are a bit off. As examiners are on a special salary rate http://apps.opm.gov/SSR/tables/index.cfm they don't get the full COLA, however you get an automatic 3% a year in addition to the COLA for the first 4 steps per pay grade, 2 years for the next 3 per step, and i believe 4 after that.
Actually the PTO is paying up to 10k a year in bonuses for 4 years right now. Plus as a new examiner you can get up to 2 promotions in a single year (used to be eligible for 1 after 6 months and every year after that up to gs-13 though you can get your gs-14 promotion earlier). For someone with a year of experience prior to joining the PTO (or has a grad degree), they would start as a gs-7 making about 62k a year prior to bonuses. Within 4 years they can be making 100k prior to bonuses and overtime.
Did anyone mention the benefits? Due to high turnover the benefits package is awesome to retain examiners.
You get paid overtime (you can even work overtime at home! you can work up to gs-15 step 10 pay via OT and still get bonuses on top of that)
Flexible work schedule, you can take off every mon/wed/friday if you want, or work 12 hour days and take off most of the second week of the biweek. (infact the new flat goal work schedule you can work anywhere you want as long as you meet your quota, dont have to come in to the office)
comp time (my favourite benefit, work your hours in advance then go on a long vacation),
free law school (with service obligation),
up to 10k a year for related studies (masters/phd in your field or a related one),
Pension: 1% for each year of service, (same for federal government in general)
TSP (think 401k)
health benefits heavily subsidized
Rapid promotions, you can go from a gs-5 to gs-15 in as little as 6 years if you are straight out of college.
start off with 13 sick days and 13 vacation days (goes up to 19.5 after 3 years of service and 26 after 15 years of service), 11 federal holidays (i used to have off 57 regular days a year via 26 fridays off, 11 federal holidays and 19.5 vacation days)
For someone without a law degree, or uses the PTO to finance their law degree its not a bad deal.Even better if you are an examiner who is highly efficent you can easily make well into the mid 100's just by working 40 hours a week!
Examiners are not all lawyers however to get a promotion to gs-13 you have to take a modified version of the patent bar exam. If you quit/retire after passing this exam you can practice in front of the office/BPAI as a patent agent (or attorney if you passed the bar in any state/dc, you can do everything an attorney does except littigate).
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
you can go in anytime you want as long as you make your 80 hours, so if you just don't feel like going in you dont have to as long as you get your work done.
since a lot of people can't handle the pressure/quota few really take advantage of all the benefits.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Time to put google to work for your new VoIP service provider http://www.google.com/search?q=voip+providers .
I'm very happy with a competitor (not gonna say which since all you vonage yahoos will ruin my QoS).
If you tried VoIP before and found it less than good, check the age of your cable modem (hint: upgrade if you aren't DOCSIS 2.0 or better) and check whether your router can run dd-wrt (very nice OSS with QoS that actually works). Here's another hint, buy a cheap buffalo rather than an expensive Linksys to run dd-wrt. I can't say enough about the QoS that dd-wrt provides. My old linksys $180+ router claimed QoS, but it simply didn't work. $30 Buffalo with dd-wrt actually DOES work.
Verizon slammed for 'chronically poor' service
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6176934.html
"New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo criticized telecommunications company Verizon Communications on Tuesday for "chronically poor" telephone repair service in the state."
Hey, leave Verizon alone! They're busy protecting their patents.
They could go out of business and provide NO SERVICE if they let Vonage walk all over them!!
I work for a start-up, and we've got a fairly good product compared to the competition - not only by our own account, but by the experience of our customers who've been burned by the "biggie" incumbents. Now it just so happens that one of these incumbents has a patent covering, scarily (Is that a word? It is now!), just about 100 percent of our invention, as well as that of other competitors we're currently trouncing. My fear has always been, and continues to be, that if we get big enough the incumbent owner of said patent will swoop in on us for the kill, Verizon-style.
Problem is, I brought this up to management and their attitude is basically, "Who cares? They're not taking action against us now." Maybe this will be a wake-up call for them, but somehow I doubt it.
Expect to see more of this type of action in the future, thanks to the precedent the Verizon-Vonage case sets.