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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."
... they have destroyed VOIP as a threat, and they can go about their usual greedy, grasping ways. Sprint will raise a glass to Verizon and toast to their continued wealth.
But there will come a day when we will kick their corporate corpses and spit on them.
From a customer viewpoint, I like Vonage because it's cheaper than a local phone, but I can't say I've seen any particular improvement in the service for the three years that I've been a customer. It works fine. There are some features, such as separate voicemail boxes for family members, which I've waited in vain for all along. Instead they introduced speech-to-text but are charging extra for it. Totally automated services like that ought to be free add-ons to differentiate themselves from "old-fashioned" telephone and nickle-and-diming cellphone companies. I'm not sure what their long-term plan is. Simply bridging between the Internet and POTS can't be all that hard.
This is a perfect example of how patents utterly destroy innovation.
Here we have Vonage, offering a novel and efficient solution to global communication. They're opening up new possibilities. Yet the incumbents dare not face true competition, so they quash this innovative burst of talent. And what do we get? Less innovation, and less economic efficiency.
This is utterly absurd.
In 1985 I worked out everything that was required to do this and in fact even went so far as to track down Dialog cards so I could interface a PC to a T1 line.
There is NOTHING required that is worthy of a patent. NOTHING at all. This is all a totally obvious idea and relatively easy to implement. In fact it is so obvious that when I started working on the project I never even considered that patents would be available.
I never finished that project. I was a single parent working at home and my kids at the time decided I should not be allowed to program. Alas.
Now of course we have projects like Asterisk and its quite mature.
So how does this ruling affect projects like Asterisk? (www.asterisk.org)
Are we banned from plugging a hand held device that contains both a speaker and a microphone into a computer now? Or are we banned from connecting the computer to the telco switch, which BTW is a computer.
Maybe we are banned from connecting a computer which is called a PC to a computer which is called a switch via a network which has been in common use for decades.
To the fellow who points out that people who are too dumb to get out of jury duty are put in charge of million dollar technical decisions which they cannot possibly understand.... yes. You are 100% correct and you make an excellent post.
Its clear that lawyers have managed to turn technical progress into a game of craps. IMHO this is something the public needs to be more aware of and somehow it would be nice if our pollies could be held accountable for the bad legislation they created. We really need to get patent business out of the computer business.
"If you have a real phone line, then most of the big long distance companies offer an unlimited plan.
A quick check showed plans from AT&T, and MCI, were avaible."
Sure they do, but at more than double the price I pay Vonage.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
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."
Sharon, you must think we're a bunch of chumps. We didn't get to be big phone companies by being nice, you know. Better service and lower prices? Did you really think we'd let you get away with that little stunt?
Why do you think we pushed patents in the first place? Monopolies have always been about better profits, and never about better customer service or value. Quite charming that someone out there actually believes in such antiquated notions, really.
I believe, Sharon, you are just beginning to understand how a phone company is supposed to work. Better customer service? Hah! We're here to make a profit, and while your little charade was entertaining, it's high time you got on with being serious about being a phone company.
I mean, honestly, when was the last time one of your customers was on hold for more than a half hour before finally giving up? And you call yourselves a phone company...
Better technology? Are you serious? Why, that costs money, you know. Did you really believe our lawyers would let you get away with that?
After all, just who do you think we are?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Its strange, as a fan of Law and Order, I've always wanted to serve on a jury (yes, I know the process, many friends and relatives have enlightened me as to how it sucks, but still). I had a juror summons recently and they wanted me on quite literally one of the 3 days per year that I absolutely cannot do it because of my job. I sent an e-mail to the address on the summons, received no response, didn't show up, and received no additional summons/notifications/letters/whatever. If it is that easy to dodge jury duty (and I want to be a juror!), I wonder who exactly is on these juries.
Forgive me for posting as AC for obvious reasons.
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. Why is "Getting out of jury duty" considered smart? Yes, it is a hassle and there are opportunity costs involved, but think of the cost of ALL JURIES BEING RETARDED.
Because the jury selection process has been corrupted to the point that anyone with any background in the subject in question, or an engineering background in general, will be deliberately excluded from the selection.
If I understand it correctly, this apparently started out to avoid having jury members bring into their deliberations any personal knowledge of information that is not in evidence (and thus was not subject to challenge by the litigating parties). But the net effect is to exclude exactly those people with the educational toolkit to make informed judgements on technical issues, rather than being led around by the rhetorical skills of the attorneys.
People with technical backgrounds are, in fact, excluded from most trials. The ability to reason logically is seen as a liability by both prosecuting and defending attorneys.
One result is that the panels finally selected are far from a statistical sample of the population - with a statistical bias that subverts the intent of the jury system - and thus justice - to an extreme degree.
The other result is that going through jury selection is, for most technical people (along with anybody with a strong political position, knowledge of guns or crime, etc.), a massive waste of time. They will almost never be selected.
= = = =
By the way: You won't find the phrase "jury of his peers" in the US legal system. This is because we're all supposed to be peers before the law. Thus you have no case if you, as an engineer, object to being tried by a jury that systematically excludes engineers and consists exclusively of people who are retired or on welfare.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'd feel bad for Vonage except they already screwed me this year so I learned the hard way they were no less evil than any other phone company. I had been a customer of Vonage a year or so ago. I had several lines and had bought a couple decent phones to go with their service. I still have the boxes and receipts for these phones. I moved, switched jobs, etc and canceled my service until I'd gotten settled back in. When I go to turn my service back on I find out that they'd managed to leave one line subscribed. They swear up and down that there is no way I could have canceled my other lines without canceling that line unless I'd specified for that to happen. So if I want to get service back I'll have to pay the monthly fees and extra fees for that line before I can re-open my account. They never even sent me any kind of paper notice letting me know a line was still connected and going unpaid. 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. So fine, I argue with them for a while and get nowhere so I figure I'll just sign my wife up an account instead and worry about the fees later. No go - they lock the devices to individual users accounts. You can't switch them to another account even if you've previously disabled the phone from your account to add a different, more expensive, phone to your account. Okay this sucks - I check the packaging and none of the phones says anything about being locked to the vendor let alone to a specific account. The only note I have about this policy is a blurp that came with the original phone I got with my service and I'd assumed it'd only count for that phone as they gave me a discount off the price for signing up. The other phones I'd bought I couldn't get the discount because I was already a Vonage customer. Several hundred dollars down the drain with some nice VoIP phones I can no longer use at all and I chose not to open my wife a new account if I couldn't use the phones I'd already purchased.
This is ass stupid behavior from a company. I had been a loyal customer who frequently told people how good their service was. Now I tell them how much Vonage sucks and to beware their dishonest business practicies. Brilliant move. Giving me a $100 credit for service I didn't use would have got my business back for years to come.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Now if only we were all smart enough to realize that this might be a source of our problems.
On the other hand, realistically, how could eight randomly chosen citizens with no experience in the telecommunications field possibly come to an educated decision? Isn't a trial of this nature really just going to come down to which lawyer has the most winning personality (or the best ability to "dumb it down" in a way a layperson can understand?)
I understand we as individuals are entitled to be tried by a jury of our peers, but when one multinational corporation is suing another are eight Kansas City residents really "peers?"
And no, I don't have a better alternative to suggest, but something is clearly broken here.
I was the foreman on a murder trial a few years ago.
After the trial, speaking with the defense and prosecutors, they both said they nearly excluded me, but both took a chance. They outright told me that they are afraid of people in technical, specifically IT related technical fields, serving on juries. They didn't really elaborate much but it was the general rule, not one just for this case.
I did convey to them that I believed that was wrong thinking on thier parts.
I am Homer of Borg. Resistance is Fut.. Mmmmmmmm, Donuts!
Let me start by saying i know very little about the specifics of this case. I also believe that there is a time and place for some sort of patent system (whether the current system is flawed, I don't know). Alot of the posts have critized the patents for stiffling progress. I'm wondering if these responses have been gut reactions reactions, or if these posters know something i do not. Does anyone know which patents are in question? Of those people who do, does anyone have the technical and legal expertise to distinguish a valid patent from one which should never have been granted? Does Sprint have a valid case for any of the patents in question? I'm not posting to defend sprint. I'm just curious what has tipped so many peoples opinion in favor of Vonage. What is it that you know that I don't?
You mention, skype, which is a voip company, but there are using their own proprietary method. Vonage otoh, is using SIP (session initiation protocol) which is the standard for voip. I just don't see what patents vonage could be infringing on but no one else is.
Heck, getting a naked DSL connection from the local telco provider in my region (Canada) means I also get hit with a $10 charge, (penalty) because I'm not also subscribing to their phone service. What kind of company bills you for NOT using their service? It's damned criminal, but there's precious little which can be done about it. I liked it waaaay back when Bell was a government controlled monopoly. When they pulled greedy tactics, the public was quick to slam them down. It was rare for me to ever see a phone bill over $25 a month back then.
Then the whole show was deregulated and competition opened up and everybody cheered because they were ignorant. (People! Oh lordy, but they can be sooooo dumb!) I was one of the only people yelling, "Don't you see? It's a trap!" --Before I finally switched to VOIP, $100 phone bills were not uncommon. And that didn't include ISP charges.
I love socialism. Competition is a great idea, but it doesn't work at the huge corporate level, because the big players are too few in number, they can cleverly jack up prices and nobody can sick the government on them to control their rampant greed.
If people were less easily fast-talked by corporate America, if our governing bodies actually served the people who pay for it, then this could be a really beautiful world.
The problem isn't just greed, it's ignorance.
Knowledge protects.
-FL
The patent award doesn't mean you built it or have it working or even thought of it first. It just means you filled out the paperwork first. Then you sit like a leach and suck the blood of the people who actually MADE the idea work. Most of the patents are obvious to anyone, or if highly technical would be obvious to anyone in the field. Very few of the patents over the last 30 or 40 years are truely original or involve any scientific research. Patents were supposed to protect someone inventing something, for example a NEW way to generate energy not to protect the idea of one-clicking on a webpage via the internet. That is just simple, outright theft/blackmail. It sits on top of dozens if not hundreds of PRIOR major techincal innovations. Our politicians should be hung for allowing such bullshit.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Well, your understanding of socialism goes a long way to explaining why Americans are so ubelievably ignorant of what it means to live in a socialist country. Thank you for clarifying your poorly thought through position.