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.'"

Comments

stalemate

[yada21]

Welcome to the patent quagmire. The whole progress of industry will become a stalemate if this goes on.

End the patent nonesense now!

Re:stalemate

[badasscat]

End the patent nonesense now!

There really needs to be a distinction made in this discussion between frivolous patents, patent trolls and legitimate patents.

I don't think Verizon is a patent troll, although their patent could still be frivolous and honestly, I don't know whether this is.

But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation, by providing protection for unique ideas. Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day? (That's especially true for startups, which don't have the money to compete head to head with larger, more established companies.)

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.

Re:stalemate

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon is a patent troll, at least in this case. They waited far too long, in my opinion, to file suit against Vonage. You should not be able to selectively enforce your patent and only target those you feel confident or have financial motivation to target. The patents are very broad, Vonage is certainly not the only infringer. Why hasn't Verizon filed suit against others?

Re:stalemate

[walt-sjc]

Of COURSE they are a patent troll - the patents are obvious to anyone in the field. The patent office is granting anything that is an old idea applied to the internet and calling it new. Until they stop this, the madness will continue.

Verizon is simply using this technology to maintain their defacto monopoly. This is not about innovation - it's about crushing a competitor or competing technology.

Vonage is not alone. If this case holds, it will effectively destroy VoIP.

Re:stalemate

[eln]

Maybe Verizon's patent is a good one, but it's still pretty sleazy the way they did this. They basically let Vonage exist for years, let Vonage spend all the money marketing the VoIP concept to the masses, let Vonage spend all the time and money proving the concept that VoIP could make money and could move beyond the geek space. Vonage did all of that, and now that Joe Blow is comfortable with the concept, and now that Vonage has millions of established customers, Verizon can swoop in, kill Vonage, and get all of those customers without having to spend all the time and money building all of that up themselves.

So, in this case, even if Verizon's patent is valid, they behaved like a patent troll would: Let someone else do all the hard work building up customers and developing your patent into a marketable product, wait until they have lots of customers and are making lots of money, THEN go in and nail them.

If Verizon was only interested in protecting their IP, they would have gone after Vonage a whole lot sooner.

Re:stalemate

[AVee]

I'm not entirely into the details, but according to this article the patents include the briliant idea to connect a voip network with the pots network. Anyone trying to patent something that obvious is a patent troll to me.

And to be honest, the rest of these patents really look like solutions anyone could come up with given the same problem. And perhaps that is the biggest problem with patents these days, most of them are just describing logical obvious solutions. Generally it's just an old solution applied to a somewhat new problem.

Re:stalemate

[davmoo]

While Vonage was doing all that work, they should have performed one more task. They should have had someone do a patent check.

Its not totally Verizon's fault.

Re:stalemate

[Znork]

"There really needs to be a distinction made"

No.

"But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation"

Actually, the whole point of patents was to indirectly tax the population by handing out monopolies to friends of the crown. The later rationalizations have proven of dubious veracity and value.

"Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day?"

Why would anyone make a hammer if anybody else could just copy it the next day? Why would anyone invent a wheel? Why would anyone build better houses? Why would anyone bother writing code if anyone could copy it the next day? Yet we find both hammers and immense amounts of free software.

Innovation happens regardless of protection; it's done to scratch an itch, to solve a problem, to do things better than the competition. Competition and communication is what drives it, monopolies and legal issues merely slow it down.

The only real mitigation for the damage patents do to the economy is disclosure, and the only situation in which the disclosure aspect has more value than the damage cause is when nobody would have managed to reverse-engineer and distribute the knowledge in the time the patent takes to lapse. Doubt those situations even exist anymore.

If you want to 'encourage innovation', then fine, do it within ordinary government budget procedures. _PAY_ the inventors for their patents as they get used. Demand performance measurements; show some _proof_ that the resources are used appropriately. Quit handing out monpolies with their dubious value and economically damaging aspects, as well as their negative effects on development. Hand out a check instead. The patent system costs huge amounts and makes the economy less competetive as it is (in everything from higher costs of products to high medical costs); switching it over to a tax/benefits scheme costs nothing to the economy as a whole and merely has the benefit of making someone actually accountable for the true costs of the system.

Re:stalemate

[ciscoguy01]

Congress needs to address the problem with broad software patents once and for all.

Most of these software patents the clueless patent examiner lawyers at USPTO are granting are obvious and stupid.
Things that have *always* been done that way by *lots* of people are now patented property, since the patent examiners hardly have the experience and knowledge to tell the difference between the obvious and something actually unique.

Software patents should be either eliminated completely, or should be strictly limited, like a 1 year term and very easy to bring forward information (prior art) to cancel them.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Verizon basically patented an extension of DNS. Mapping addresses to phone numbers? Puleeze. We did that in a database in 1977.

I should have patented it then. Heh.

Re:stalemate

[virtual_mps]

While Vonage was doing all that work, they should have performed one more task. They should have had someone do a patent check.

Its not totally Verizon's fault. Hahahahaha. Have you actually ever done a patent search? Go ahead, list for us the patents that might affect a voice over IP business. That's why the system is stupid--there are so many patents that are so broadly written that it is easier to reinvent the wheel than to find it in the patent system. It is absolutely certain that any non-trivial product has implemented some patented ideas, but it would cost more than the product is worth to find them all.

Re:stalemate

[Hrvat]

Well, I'm sure many would be willing to join USPTO as patent examiners but for one thing: the pay. People who have the skills to examine these patents and to investigate prior art etc. are deterred by the dismal pay USPTO is offering: salary starts at less than a half of what software developers with measly 3-7 years experience are offered around DC these days, and the ceiling is definitively way under what someone qualified could make in the private sector or even as a contractor for the government.

Re:stalemate

[Alioth]

Have you ever tried to do one? It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent. I've been doing a bit of coding today for an embedded system I'm designing, and although all of the code is run of the mill trivial stuff, I'd not be surprised if I've probably infringed at least four or five patents in the process. Fortunately, I don't live in the US so I don't care.

Part of patent reform should include that if someone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they independently came up with the idea that they are now being sued over, this should be evidence that the patent was not non-obvious in the first place (or else someone wouldn't have independently thought it up) - and this should automatically invalidate the patent.

The USPTO themselves admit that only 5% of patents are worthy, they even have a term for these 5% - "pioneer patents" - i.e. patents that are truly novel and non-obvious. The other part of patent reform should be that only these "pioneer patents" should be accepted.

Re:stalemate

[chihowa]

Welcome to capitalism my friend

Nope. This whole mess was caused by government intervention. In a capitalist free market system, there would be no artificial monopolies such as are granted by patents. This is Verizon killing off Vonage by decidedly non-capitalistic means.

Re:stalemate

[stonecypher]

Maybe Verizon's patent is a good one, but it's still pretty sleazy the way they did this. They basically let Vonage exist for years, let Vonage spend all the money marketing the VoIP concept to the masses, let Vonage spend all the time and money proving the concept that VoIP could make money and could move beyond the geek space. Vonage did all of that, and now that Joe Blow is comfortable with the concept, and now that Vonage has millions of established customers, Verizon can swoop in, kill Vonage, and get all of those customers without having to spend all the time and money building all of that up themselves.

Yeah, you don't actually know that.

I worked for a company I'll decline to identify when something vaguely parallel like this went on several years back; the companies were smaller, but still large companies. I worked for the Verizon analogue, which I'm going to start calling Bizarro-Verizon, because it's less awful than "the company I worked for" over and over, and because I've been watching SeaLab 2021.

Bizarro-Verizon spent six months notifying Bizarro-Vonage that they needed to open up a licensing agreement; Bizarro-Vonage never seemed to bother. So, Bizarro-Verizon set up an account as if they were a customer at the publically published rates, and just started invoicing Bizarro-Vonage. Some manager inside Bizarro-Vonage spent a month getting the account coordinated and set up, then several months trying to haggle the price down, all the while letting this enormous debt grow and grow, only to announce one day that he couldn't actually find any point at which his company had agreed to pay at all, and since it had been a year, he felt it was pretty obvious they weren't infringing, that negotiations were over, and that we might consider using the invoices as kindling.

So, Bizarro-Verizon spent a new six months indicating first that the account needed to be set up so that the standing debt for the use of their technology could be paid, and as that got ignored, progressively got angrier, until at the end they were threatening to sue. Bizarro-Vonage took the same gamble Real-Vonage took, and lost.

Did we submarine them for a year and a half? No: it's just at medium-sized companies, it takes time for stuff to percolate from one end to the other, and more time to be convinced they're not doing what they're supposed to. At companies the size of AT&T and Vonage, I'm surprised they got here this quickly, to be frank.

Re:stalemate

[Thraxen]

While I think the patent system needs reform, your stance is a bit extreme and completely naive. It often costs a LOT of money to develop and idea into a product. Why should one company spend invest a ton of money into bringing a new idea into the marketplace only to have another company swipe their idea when they are done? The second company didn't spend a dime on the research. The first company should most definitely have the right to bring their idea into the market without a bunch of copycats suddenly appearing so they can recover their investment costs and establish their brand.

What we don't need are companies sitting on ideas and doing nothing with them. It's sort of the reverse of the situation above. Patent an idea, but don't spend a dime developing it. Then when someone else runs with the idea, sue them and take all their profits.

Both situations are equally bad... you simply traded one bad idea for another. Try again.

Re:stalemate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's the smart thing to do. But it's destructive behaviour, it's not what the patent system was designed to encourage. The system is broken and needs to be fixed.

Re:stalemate

[uncqual]

There needs to be counterbalance (esp. for the little guys who are sued for infringement by the big guys - which probably isn't quite the case here).

If AllegedOwner sues InnocentCompany for infringement of a patent on LameIdea and the patent is declared invalid in the process, there should be some cost the AllegedOwner should pay. Perhaps in such a case, AllegedOwner (and all entities with a common parent and any subsequent spinoffs, etc) must pay InnocentUser all profits (perhaps revenue even) ever gained from LameIdea and lose the right to ever use LameIdea without buying a license from InnocentCompany (on terms suitable to InnocentCompany or assignee). Note that this pretty much just makes AllegedOwner subject to just what InnocentCompany would have been subject to if the patent were ruled valid. All other players of course would get to use the LameIdea w/o charge (as there's no patent on it anymore).

After all, AllegedOwner was very sure it was a valid, good patent (and, with this provision, might actually *believe* this before suing). This would also be a great way for the little guy to be able to find competent legal representation when sued for patent infringement (after all, the alleged infringer really wasn't expecting a patent license fee so would probably be willing to assign all such rights to a group of lawyers).

Re:stalemate

[grnrckt94]

If I'm a Verizon exec, I see this as a perfectly executed business tactic. Verizon seems not to have done anything outside the law. Vonage should have done their homework. Sleazy or not, it was a cut throat move by Verizon. I do believe there should be a statute of limitations on this type of thing though to prevent these larger companies from cutting down the "little" guy as Verizon seems to have just done. As far as a ruling, I'd like to see the courts force Vonage to pay some sort of indemnification to Verizon instead of forcing them to stop using the technology. Verizon can't reasonably expect Vonage to just close down, and the courts have to see this for what it was, blatant patent trolling by Verizon. There needs to be some sort of precendent set so that the Verizons of the world bring these types of patent violations up in a timely manner instead of using them as a manner to squash their competitors.

Re:stalemate

[greenbird]

If Verizon was only interested in protecting their IP, they would have gone after Vonage a whole lot sooner.

They couldn't go after them sooner. They didn't have the patents yet.

Re:stalemate

[Momomoto]

I believe that you are confusing patent examiners with patent agents.

Re:stalemate

[johndierks]

This is not true. Patent examiners are not lawyers general. USPTO does pay for examiners to go to law school though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_examiners#Unit ed_States

A qualified examiner with the USPTO is a United States citizen and holds at a minimum a Bachelor degree in one of the physical sciences, life sciences, engineering disciplines, or in computer science. Advanced academic degrees and relevant work experience in the technical area are not uncommon either. Specific fields [6] include computer science (with calculus, differential equations and statistics), electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, agriculture engineering, biomedical engineering, ceramic engineering, textile engineering, computer hardware and software engineering, transportation and construction engineering, metallurgy, materials engineering, physics, chemical engineering, organic chemistry, chemistry, biology, and pharmacology.

Re:stalemate

[spagetti_code]

Have you ever tried to do one?

yes

It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent

In theory, yes, maybe.

In practical, no. There are core areas to everyone's technology and those
are what you need to focus on. In Vonage's case - their VoIP to POTS switching
would at least have deserved a quick patent check. Its painful, but a few days
work at most by a senior architect who understands their system.

I'm not defending the patent spagetti we have now - but it *is* possible to do
a relatively quick patent check when you are setting up a business.

I suspect what has happened is that Vonage started putting together their
service before patents really got as high profile and tangled as they are now.
I would *bet* they knew about the patent issue at some point, and probably
hoped it would go away.

Re:stalemate

[rifter]

I'm not entirely into the details, but according to this [ipurbia.com] article the patents include the briliant idea to connect a voip network with the pots network. Anyone trying to patent something that obvious is a patent troll to me.

It's not just obvious, but not even novel. First off, VOIP is not by any means a new technology. The way it is currently being marketed is somewhat new, but before the big phone companies started doing this there were a lot of little companies that were trying to innovate in this area only to be swatted by the big phone companies. Second, the connection between POTS and internet telephony is not new either; the aforementioned companies were doing this stuff back in the mid-to-late nineties. These patents are from 2001/2/3. The phone companies know all of this because they were the ones trying to stop telephony from leaking onto the internet, until they were able to move into the situation they are in now, where they are the ones setting the prices and making the money instead of free services and other low cost alternatives eating their bottom line. The result has been lesser technology for higher prices under the guise of innovation.

Even if you ignore the fact that these technologies and even their specific application to the internet are not new, nothing else described in the patents is any different than what has been done in telco systems for around a hundred years. You can't suggest that switching systems based on numbers and billing people for the calls is really an innovation in a sane world. It's not just BS, it is a many-layered onion of recursive BS, which is BS on so many levels it is astounding that anyone is seriously contemplating the idea that the situation as it stands might be justified.

Re:stalemate

[JesseMcDonald]

yeah but w/o regulation our nation would never have made it out of the railroad monopoly era. so win some lose some.

Without regulation we wouldn't have had the railroad monopoly era. (Or did you forget that the railroad monopolies were the result of tax-funded public-works projects?)

Re:stalemate

[cpt kangarooski]

Because what you're describing isn't a patent, it's a copyright.

Patents, copyrights, and trademarks do not overlap at all, although they may each apply to a different aspect of a single product.

A patent protects an invention generally. In order to be patentable, the invention must be useful, novel, and nonobvious. That is, it must actually work, it must never have been invented before, and it cannot be a minor variation on what is already known to people having an ordinary skill in the field the invention is in (in this case software). If you get a patent, then it covers the invention no matter if someone later independently invents the same thing, and no matter what the implementation of the covered invention. So basically, it would deal with the general way in which certain aspects of the program worked.

A copyright protects a creative work. In order to be copyrightable, the work must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. Useful devices, such as machines with gears and wheels and so forth are not copyrightable. However, software manages to straddle the line as it is both a literary work (it is basically a written set of instructions for a machine, and not a machine itself) though that work is normally of the most value when it is executed, causing a machine to act as instructed, at which point it is rather machine-like itself. A copyright only protects work which is original from being copied. If someone independently writes the same thing without having copied it, then even though it is identical, their work is both copyrightable (because it originated with them) and is non-infringing (because they didn't copy it). This is quite different from patents! Further, a copyright only protects the expression of an idea, and not an idea itself. That is, it protects a single implementation, and perhaps some trivial variations of that implementation (otherwise people could change one word, copy everything else, and claim to avoid infringement, which wouldn't be fair) of software, but does not prevent other people from making different implementations or independently re-doing the same one. Again, this is unlike a patent, which covers an invention across all implementations.

And a trademark protects a name and the reputation that goes with that name. This is partially a form of consumer protection (if you want to buy Adobe Photoshop then you don't want other products to use the same name to try to trick you into getting them instead of what you were really after) and partially a way of preventing unfair competition (where people could let Adobe build up a good reputation and then leech off of it for other products). It doesn't protect anything useful, like patents do, and it doesn't prevent copying like copyrights do (because if it's absolutely identical, then the reasoning for protecting a mark goes out the window). Trademarks are about protecting reputation and indicating that a good has the same level of quality as other goods marked the same way (whether for good or ill).

To recap: patents cover underlying principles, copyrights cover specific implementations, and trademarks cover market reputation.

What you were describing was basically like a copyright.

What I think would work best would be to reform both the patent and copyright systems. I don't think we need software patents because the purpose of software patents is to spur invention, bringing-to-market, and disclosure, which otherwise wouldn't have happened. But in the software industry, unlike many other fields, there are many other extremely strong incentives to invent and bring to market. Disclosure I'll get to in a moment. This being the case, the added incentive of a patent might not actually be helping things. And the burden of having a patent, which does prevent competition in the market and which can discourage inventors if they'll face rent-seeking from existing patent holders, may be greater than its benefits. For most fields of invention, this is not the case, but for software, we do

Only one appropriate response...

[gatorflux]

Woohoo woo hoo hoo!

Re:Only one appropriate response...

[MontyApollo]

Or you just don't get it...

Re:Only one appropriate response...

[DoctorPepper]

I was thinking more like:

"BooHoo Boo Hoo Hoo"

Re:Only one appropriate response...

[Aladrin]

It always ruins a joke to explain it. -sigh-

It's a quote from their own commercials. It's sung in the background to a silly tune while people do amaaaazingly stupid things.

It's more than appropriate, it might even be prophetic.

It's worse than that

[zappepcs]

Who will Verizon go after next? Skypeout?

Now millions of people will have to turn to the existing vampiric phone services ... Verizon sucks and I won't be using their services.

I've been very happy with Vonage, does anyone know a good alternative?

Re:It's worse than that

[Anonymous Coward]

There is SunRocket.

Re:It's worse than that

[Voidwalker]

good alternative

www.lingo.com

cheaper than vonage and more coverage (not that i ever have the desire to call europe, canada and mexico often or even the west coast come to think of it ...) though i wonder now that vonage is under the gun, if lingo will be next, i haven't found any info yet on what the patent covers

Re:It's worse than that

[pNutz]

One of the other independent VoIP's: Packet8, BroadVoice, Skype (In/Out)...

Though depending on how Vonage's saga plays out, their futures may be uncertain as well.

Re:It's worse than that

[BobPaul]

I like Vitelity.net. Depending on the Vonage adapter you currently have, you may be able to unlock it so you can use it with another provider. If you search the bargainshare.com forums, you can find instructions for most, if not all of them.

But who's to know if Vitelity isn't also infringing. Does anyone know what the patents actually are? As I understand it, they were related to call termination--ie connecting a VoIP call to a POTS user. That could be a problem.

This is excellent

[ebcdic]

Millions of people will be inconvenienced by patent enforcement.

More Info?

[CastrTroy]

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.

Re:More Info?

[Billosaur]

Better yet, why don't they just work out a deal to use the patents? Isn't that the idea of patents, to allow the patent holder to profit from the patent? I know making a deal with Verizon is like selling your soul to the Devil's unsavory second cousin, but if it's the difference between the end of your business and staying afloat...

Re:More Info?

[rekoil]

Because Verizon has no interest in licensing the patent to Vonage - they're seeking an injunction preventing Vonage from using the technology, which mean no competing VoIP. The monetary damages they're seeking are for past infringement, not licensing fees for future use.

One thing to remember is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. really don't see much of a profit from regulated phone service, or even LD service - it's the add-on services (Caller ID, VM, three-way calling, etc.) that they make a mint on. With companies like Vonage around, people expect those services to be bundled in, which is the *real* danger, IMO.

Re:More Info?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

This is the best quote I could find. No mention anywhere of the actual patent numbers involved.

The infringed patents cover technology that translates 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.

Re:More Info?

[nebaz]

I found a blog, which goes into some detail, about 3 patents in this dispute.

Verizon-Vonage patent analysis Part One: 6,282,574
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Two: 6,104,711
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Three: 6,359,880

So what will happen?

[The Great Pretender]

Disclaimer - I am a Vonage customer

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?

Re:So what will happen?

[Jtheletter]

the service is not as good - voice quality is ok, but faxes fail

Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.

Patents, prior art, court?

[drinkypoo]

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?

Verizon

[EveryNickIsTaken]

And I thought these guys were pricks when I provisioned ADSL/SDSL/IDSL circuits for a regional ISP back in the late 90's. I could've sworn they had an "excuse" rolodex for reasons that a line installation would get delayed again.

Regardless, farewell Vonage. It was nice knowing thee.

The name "Vonage" may eventually go away . . .

[PeeAitchPee]

. . . 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.

Good Thing

[ArchieBunker]

They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...

Re:Good Thing

[oliphaunt]

They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...

If Vonage can show that the Verizon patents are frivolous, customer sentiment like that will be evidence that Vonage can use in their countersuit for tortious interference...

(not a lawyer. yet.)

Yellow Submarine

[brunes69]

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?).

Re:Yellow Submarine

[Random Destruction]

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.

So verizon brings a VOIP service to market that costs $100 per hour, local calls only. No customers, no advertising, almost no expense.

I agree with you though, this kind of thing really needs to be done. Just need to find a way to close the loopholes without being overcomplicated or unjust.

Vonage customers will be singing....

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hoo!
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hoo!

salvage the hardware?

[badnews]

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?

Devil lives in the details

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

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?

Re:Devil lives in the details

[dgatwood]

It's pretty simple to solve this. The implementation phase can last up to ten years, but each year, you must show that you have made reasonable progress from the prior year (as evaluated by experts in the field). A third party developing the concept independently from the ground up in a year would immediately invalidate the patent (brand new patents notwithstanding), as it would indicate that the company was not making a good faith effort to actually develop the technology into a product.

Re:Devil lives in the details

[Chuckstar]

Way to simplify the patent system.

You've also created a situation where not only the invention covered by the patent, but every step in the process of bringing the invention to market would have to be disclosed -- process of refining the invention, incorporating it into a larger product, product strategy (maybe the market is not ready to use or pay for the product), marketing decisions, and the list goes on.

What if a company was to invent a great invention but it took eleven years before the production technology matured to where the product made economic sense to actually put on the market? Too bad for them? You shouldn't invent something that's too expensive to sell?

Finally, try to prove you've developed any kind of complex invention "from the ground up", if there is already a published patent covering the invention. You'll see a lot of engineers in internet cafe's using fake IDs to download patent searches.

Re:Devil lives in the details

[danpsmith]

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?

Oh come on, I know you were desperate to point out flaws in the parent's argument, but the truth of the matter is there could be provisions. The point is that you shouldn't be able to file a patent and then just sit on an idea to prevent it from being made, as this definitely stifles not only innovation, but keeps technology stagnant. This type of technology, point blank, was bad for their business model. The fact that they sat on it is not surprising. They could've championed the idea, sure, but it would've taken work and research. They'd much rather sue the pants off anyone who pursues the idea. Which is not what the patent system was set up for.

I think the parent is right, if the company isn't pursuing the idea in a year they should be cut off from patent protection. They'd be able to document whether they were pursuing the idea or not to the patent court and let the judges there make a decision over whether progress is being made. Until an idea is brought to market they could re-hold hearings to make sure the idea is being progressed upon, otherwise the patent becomes null and void.

The whole point of this type of patent trolling is to stifle innovation while seeping money from competitors, which is exactly what is happening here. Why shouldn't the patent system prevent this non-sense? Every time something threatens the phone monopolies, the courts and big gov find a back door to bail them all out and let them continue to charge dollars for what costs them fractions of a cent. They don't want real competition. Patents were designed to give an incentive for innovation, now they just take the incentive away in some cases.

Why Patents

[SwiftOne]

Have you ever tried to do one? It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent.

(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.

OK, here's my experience with PacBell/SBC/AT&T

[PRMan]

(Notice they change their name every couple years despite being a monopoly.)

1. 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.

2. 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...

patent re-examination?

[Per Bothner]

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?

Re:I just patented voice over O2....

[SleepyHappyDoc]

If your patent covers transmission of voice through a gas medium containing a portion of nitrogen, we'll see you in court.

Re:No real meat here...

[Paulrothrock]

I was not aware that Verizon could tell me which sort of packets I could send and what destinations I could send them to. If I chose Verizon's DSL, which I don't, I'm buying the ability to send and receive packets on their network from destinations of my choice. If I want to use VoIP, there is no legitimate way they can prevent me.

And it's not like Vonage is stealing from Verizon. People need to buy the DSL service from Verizon at full price, which includes a basic hookup for a POTS phone. And people don't even need Verizon to work with Vonage. I've got cable internet. Is Vonage stealing from Verizon because they're letting people talk on the phone without having a phone line? If so, then Comcast should shut down their VoIP service.

If McDonald's wants to stop me from "stealing" their burgers, they can either raise my price or lower theirs. If Verizon wants to compete with Vonage, they either raise the charges to access their voice network or lower their prices to compete. It's not Vonage's fault that Verizon charges twice as much for half the features.

have Verizon failed to offer a license deal?

[pbhj]

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.

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 ... that's the point.

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/g400112e .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.

---

#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.

Re:It's Bigger than Vonage--Think Cable Telephones

[uncreativ]

The phone companies could also have their cake and eat it too. They've been arguing to the FCC that they needed DSL excluded from competition. "After all, cable companies can compete with phone service now and do not have to share their lines", said the phone companies. "We need television deregulation. Cable companies can now compete for telephone service, so Cable companies can face that competition from us now.", say the phone companies.

Sorry to reply to my own comment, but this looks like one major hoodwink by the phone company. They f'ing suck.

Re:They're a public utility

[aggles]

Vonage gives a utility that is unavailable from other sources. I use Comcast in one location, Adelphia from another. I can buy VOIP services from either, but can't take a box with me and have the same services where I go - like Vonage offers. The patent wars Verizon is fighting threatens my utility. This sucks!

Re:No real meat here...

[The Cisco Kid]

Your argument is utter bullshit.

Vonage wasnt using Verizon DSL. The Verizon CUSTOMER was using their Verizon DSL, to access various parts of the Internet, which included Vonage VOIP servers. Also, I doubt that that many of Vonage's customers have Verizon DSL. Most VoIP customers go with cable broadband, to avoid being forced to pay for a phone line from the ILEC that they dont need in order to get DSL.

If you have a Verizon DSL line, and you access www.ibm.com, should IBM have to pay Verizon for 'using' their DSL to send you packets containing the files making up their website? If you visit amazon.com and buy something, should Verison get a percentage? Its called the Internet stupid! The whole point is to INTER connect.

Re:No real meat here...

[sirambrose]

Yes, they sell naked dsl. They just don't want anyone to know about it. Mine was just activated yesterday.

http://www22.verizon.com/forhomedsl/channels/dsl/d ryloop/