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

[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

[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

[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.

This is excellent

[ebcdic]

Millions of people will be inconvenienced by patent enforcement.

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?

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...

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?).