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Vonage May Have Way Around Patent Disputes
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.'"
What ad?
Because slashdot has sold out!!
Actually slashdot uses some dynamic ads that simply trust the ad provider won't do shit like that. The admins here will fix it soon I bet.
I'm viewing this on a machine running XP and the same damned thing happens.
Nah I'm using XP and whatever most recent version of flash is. I hate it when ads interfere with websites. If this wasn't /., I wouldn't be coming back.
All is prevelant in the world...
Of course there's a way around it! It's software after all.
s .html
e rvice.html
I worked in a company that did software in the banking/finance world and the lawyer literally spent all her time working with engineering to figure ways around patents or otherwise write code that stuck to as many standards as legally possible.
Apparently this presented great complexity from a coding perspective.
Two informative links for those that want a bit of substantive background on the topic.
http://ipurbia.com/2007/03/verizon-patent-analysi
http://herot.typepad.com/cherot/2007/04/verizon_s
That this kind of litigation has to happen at all is another indicator of how bad the business climate is in the U.S.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
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.
it's happening in lynx too.
wait that's a smudge on the screen.
How come you read about companies violating patents one day and then finding "work arounds" the next? Seriously, if a patented technology is a crucial component in an application, how is it that the expected reaction is to bypasses it and yet keep the application functioning *exactly* like it was before.
If that doesn't show that software patents are bogus, I don't know what will.
I have to agree with this one, it's likely that whatever they're doing may infringe someone else's patent. Then again, perhaps Vonage has learned its lesson and have properly licensed the new technology that is being implemented.
A final point, Vonage better beware of the doctrine of equivalents. The doctrine of equivalents holds a party liable for patent infringement even if the infringing device/process does not fall within the literal scope of the patent's claims, but accomplishes the equivalent to the claims. It holds that if the patent claims A, B, C and D to accomplish E, and your product does B, C, and F to accomplish E, then you're liable under the doctrine of equivalents.
If Verizon tries to sue Level3 it will be presented with code which does what is described in some of their patents and is dated at least several years prior to that.
I wish Verizon would sue Level3, but they won't. They'll sue every ISP/VOIP provider that doesn't pay the Verizon Patent Tax. That costs them a couple of lawyers salaries for a huge return.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
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."
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
"....bathe a stray tom cat."
Try a window screen. As long as the screen itself is not resting on a solid surface (ie: up on small blocks) this works most of the time. The theory is that the cat will cling to the screen and allow you to bathe, examine, draw blood, admin meds, etc. Works amazingly well!
why yes IAAVT (I Am A Veterinary Technician)!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Full of penis enlargement advertisements?
I sure hope not.
Is that doctrine actually good for anything besides stifling innovation? I mean, shouldn't we be encouraging people to come up with new methods that produce the same result in a way that isn't already patented?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I'm sure the cancellation mess was frustrating, but I take exception to your assessment of the quality of Vonage's phone service. I have no idea why you had so many problems with yours, but I have been using Vonage for nearly two years now, and it is by far the best phone service I have ever used. The calls are nearly always crystal clear, except when I have a bittorrent session running, thus sucking up all my bandwidth. It never loses its connectivity, unless I lose power. The call-forwarding and simul-ring features have made managing my phone numbers incredibly easier, and the convenience of receiving my voicemail through e-mail is wonderful. Free overseas calls (at least to some countries), and you can take your home phone with you wherever you go, given the right VOIP adapter. Adding a second phone number is a piece of cake (although admittedly having a secondary number converted to a primary number is quite cumbersome, and requires a good amount of arguing with some blokes ostensibly in India). I have even been able to use a modem through it with no trouble (after dialing *99). I've gotten several months of free service by referring other folks to Vonage, who have also been very happy with the service. There may certainly be better VOIP providers than Vonage (I really don't know), but I would highly encourage anyone here to ignore this comment, as I am quite sure there are many other customers who have had a great experience with them.
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?