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Vonage May Have Way Around Patent Disputes

Posted by Zonk on from the clever-clever-company dept.

nevillethedevil writes "Bloomberg is reporting that Vonage may have found a way around the current patent issues they have been facing with Verizon and others. They are applying technological solutions to a legal problem, changing the way that Vonage's communications software operates at a basic level to ensure that they no longer infringe on patent claims. 'Vonage's new technology can be installed through software downloads and shouldn't be costly to deploy, Citron said. The company will continue to appeal the court decision that requires it to pay Verizon damages for infringing patents on technology that translates Internet-based calls to standard lines.'"

6 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Blame Flash on Linux. by Sergey23 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm viewing this on a machine running XP and the same damned thing happens.

  2. Short-term solution by interiot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This just means that 1) Vonage's new implementation could unknowingly fall under somebody else's patent, and they'd have to play the whole game over again, and 2) Vonage will patent their new implementation (to try to avoid this mess again, since that will at least make it so that only pre-May-2007 patents can sink Vonage), but that will just cause more headaches for the next organization who thinks that implementing VoIP/POTS integration can be done in an obvious / non-patentable way.

  3. Go Vonage! by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Go Vonage. I doubt anyone believes for a moment that Verizon is doing anything with these patents to make VoIP calls, cheaper, better, or easier to use. Most likely just the opposite -- which is completely anti-consumer!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:Go Vonage! by liam193 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Not exactly. Actually, in the USA it is for neither of those reasons.

      To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;


      The key portion here is the reason for which Congress is allowed to secure the rights to authors and inventors. The purpose is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. I think the problem that many who post on here have with patent and copyright laws in general is that often they are imposed not to promote the progress but to stifle it. As a result, it would stand to reason that Congress doesn't really have the right to provide a patent for that purpose and therefore the granting of the patent would be unconstitutional. While this is not the way our legal system sees it, it is the way the language was written by our founding fathers.
  4. Re:Vonage's shares... by p00pyhead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Vonage has at least two problems.
    1. They operate like Big-Business (2.5 million customers, and losing money like a drunken sailor)
    2. Vonage is destoying Big-Telco's cash cow.

    I think the technology is great, but Vonage will be taken down by people who have too much to lose if IP telephony becomes more prevalent and prices keep falling.

    Thankfully, this tided will not be stopped. They are at least half a dozen vonages on the internet, and hundreds of vonages to come... until Telephone becomes just like today's email.
    cheers,
    p00p

  5. Re: I have both by Eric+Coleman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am both a Vonage and Verizon customer, and there is no traditional concept of copper at all involved that needs to be maintained. I have business class internet over fiber optic cable to the house. Verizon is the data provider and Vongage is the phone provider.

    Anyone that gets a traditional phone in this city will have fiber optic cable routed to the house, there is no copper anymore, and the phone line terminates into a box in one's garage where the fiber from the alley terminates.

    Regardless of which company I pick, the signal from the phone to digital data is either converted in a little blue linksys box in the house or in a little cream colored box in the garage. Either way, it's digital before it leaves the house.

    In terms of features, price, and flexibility, Vongage wins hands down over Verizon.

    If Vongage is a "leech", then so is Slashdot and Google and just about every other usefull site on the internet as they call come down the same tube of light in a digital format.

    As far as I see it, the internet infrastructure should be considered like railroads and highways. No one company should dictate what travels through them, as they are too fundamental to our society.

    Does anyone really consider pizza delivery companies to be leeches of the road system?