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Vonage Hit With $69.5M Judgement
andy1307 writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Net telephone company Vonage Holdings Corp. was ordered in federal court Tuesday to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for infringing on six telecommunications patents owned by competitor Sprint Nextel Corp. In addition to the damages, jurors awarded Sprint Nextel a 5 percent royalty from Vonage on future revenues. It was the second verdict against Vonage this year. A jury in Virginia determined in March that Vonage had violated three Verizon patents in building its Internet phone system. The jury awarded Verizon $58 million in damages plus 5.5 percent royalties on future revenues. Greg Gorbatenko, a telecommunications and media analyst for Jackson Securities, said the decision 'feels like a death knell' for Vonage because future revenue will likely dry up, preventing the company from investing in better technology or improving customer service."
Damn, I wish I'd remembered to patent "connecting phone calls over the internet" when I thought about it... oh, the first time I saw a microphone attached to a PC.
Seriously, 8 random people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty are considered smart enough to understand the fine points of patent law and internet telephony? And this is enough to cripple a (relatively) small startup company? Can someone remind me what Sprint/Nextel did with these oh-so-valuable patents, and what Vonage did that cost them tens of millions of dollars? Besides not paying sprint tens of millions of dollars, that is.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
But there will come a day when we will kick their corporate corpses and spit on them.
That day will only come when the US Government, as we currently know and love it, dissolves because until then, it will be illegal to spit on those that fund our lawmakers pet projects.
It is when the only way you can implement it is with the approval of and huge payoffs to the industry oligarchs that currently control telecommunications and who's market VoIP is undermining.
Who is John Galt?
Interesting contradiction in a CNN article:
...
"We are disappointed that the jury did not recognize that our technology differs from that of Sprint's patents," chief legal officer Sharon O'Leary said in a statement.
"Vonage is working on a technology "workaround" to Sprint's patents similar to how it is addressing the Verizon patents."
Why would it be working on work-arounds for patents that it is not infringing?
In fact, i think we may be seeing that cost all over the friggan place at the moment.
Ice Cream has no bones.
We've got patents being issued on obvious / unpatentable ideas and they're being upheld by courts that appear to be working for the big corporations - maybe the judges are clueless or overworked, but decisions like this one don't make the legal system look good.
Jointly, the current giant telecom companies hold patents on everything up to and including transmitting a voice over a wire. Any inventor that comes up with a better or cheaper way to provide voice telephony service will receive the same treatment that Vonage did.
Pet projects (like the bridge to nowhere, or 50+ Robert Byrd memorial buildings) are paid for by the taxpayer, which the federal gov't has no compunction about spitting upon. If the taxpayers (and voters) didn't hand them unlimited power in exchange for aiding "the poor", "the middle class", "the retired" and "the children", lobbyists and special interests wouldn't receive federal favors.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's really kind of ironic. Verizon bought out MCI, which was one of the first long distance companies that was able to circumvent the AT&T regulated monopoly. Their microwave towers were disrupting the existing market forces in much the same way that Vonage and VoIP in general has the potential to be. Now a company that only managed to get its start by being basically "a law firm with an antenna on the roof" is essentially using their army of lawyers to keep down their potential competitors.
Funny how that works.
Well, I hope Vonage continues, as I like their service. If it goes under though, the city telecom offers POTS over their shiny new fiber optic lines. The only reason I didn't get that with the TV and internet is because its more expensive than Vonage.
This is a perfect example of how bad patent laws and poor bureaucratic administartion utterly destroy innovation.
Fixed for you.
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
It is increasingly starting to look like the US system will grind to a halt. The real question is what it will take for competition from abroad to force a reform. My guess is that sooner or latter the US economy will take such a hit that the rest of the world will no longer be dependant upon it. When that happens Black Tuesday will look like statistical noise in comparison.
Vonage isn't in trouble for operating a VOIP service...tons of people do that, the cable company's phone offerings, skype, etc. I have no idea what patents they violated, but it would be a specific method or implementation...not the concept in general.
Dozens of other companies are doing VOIP and they're in the clear, so maybe Vonage just didn't bother to get the licenses necessary or use a different implementation.
Seriously though, why would ANYONE consider it smart to get out of jury duty when the decisions of the juries impacts case law like no other.
Ehh...not really. Juries decide questions of fact. Questions of law are decided by judges. A jury's decision rarely has any sort of precedential effect at all.
This is not free market capitalism. This is monopolistic capitalism with a dash of fascism, in that the corporations control the government. There is a huge difference.
Supposedly they emailed me the notice to my dead old work account and that I should have made sure they had an updated email address before I canceled my account.
First rule: Don't use work e-mail for personal bills. Of course, unless they were related....
Karnal
Their real plan is to continue changing their own infrastructure to IP and continue to charge their customers the same price, pocketing the difference for as many years as possible.