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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.'"

3 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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."
  3. 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