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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.'"
Of course there's a way around it! It's software after all.
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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.
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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.
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.
"....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
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.