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Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround

Posted by Zonk on from the i-hear-violins dept.

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.'"

5 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. No real meat here... by cdrguru · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.

    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 ... often nothing at all.

    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.

  2. Re:stalemate by Thraxen · · Score: 1, Troll

    That's complete BS. You shouldn't be allowed to allow a company slide for years and then suddenly decide to enforce it when they are big enough to get a nice chunk of change out of them... that's ludicrous and idiotic beyond belief.

  3. Re:stalemate by Pyrion · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's not "idiotic," it's smart business practice. If you have a practically guaranteed chance of success in suing someone out of business, you don't sue them when you have nothing to gain.

    --
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
  4. You guys are losing sight of what matters here by hxnwix · · Score: 1, Troll
    Innovation itself and the future of recognition for it is at stake. Verizon spent many, many - a great many - years heavily investing in research that finally resulted in original, patented ideas. Why should Vonage just get to use Verizon's ideas? Because they thought of them, too? Because anyone implementing a commercial VOIP to POTS solution necessarily would? Hooey. Clearly, Verizon required an army of monkeys to spend thousands of monkey years working on these ideas, and at any rate, Vonage shouldn't just get to make money at Verizon's expense.

    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.
  5. Re:stalemate by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 0, Troll

    Well this is true of all patents, especially on Mars.