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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.'"

30 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. stalemate by yada21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:stalemate by badasscat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:stalemate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

    3. Re:stalemate by walt-sjc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:stalemate by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:stalemate by davmoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
    6. Re:stalemate by Znork · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "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.

    7. Re:stalemate by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      .
    8. Re:stalemate by virtual_mps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    9. Re:stalemate by Alioth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
    10. Re:stalemate by chihowa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    11. Re:stalemate by stonecypher · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      StoneCypher is Full of BS
    12. Re:stalemate by uncqual · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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).

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  2. Only one appropriate response... by gatorflux · · Score: 4, Funny

    Woohoo woo hoo hoo!

    1. Re:Only one appropriate response... by MontyApollo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or you just don't get it...

    2. Re:Only one appropriate response... by DoctorPepper · · Score: 4, Funny

      I was thinking more like:

      "BooHoo Boo Hoo Hoo"

      --

      No matter where you go... there you are.
  3. It's worse than that by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    1. Re:It's worse than that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is SunRocket.

    2. Re:It's worse than that by Voidwalker · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

    3. Re:It's worse than that by pNutz · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
  4. This is excellent by ebcdic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Millions of people will be inconvenienced by patent enforcement.

  5. So what will happen? by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

    --
    A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
  6. Patents, prior art, court? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.'"
  7. Good Thing by ArchieBunker · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  8. Re:More Info? by nebaz · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
  9. Yellow Submarine by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?).

  10. Devil lives in the details by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  11. Why Patents by SwiftOne · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  12. OK, here's my experience with PacBell/SBC/AT&T by PRMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    (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...

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  13. Re:I just patented voice over O2.... by SleepyHappyDoc · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    --
    Stasis is death. Embrace change.