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Vonage Settles Patent Suit With Sprint-Nextel
mytrip writes to tell us that Vonage has been able to settle their patent differences with Sprint-Nextel for a mere $80 million. This settlement resolves all pending claims by Sprint-Nextel as well as licensing Vonage to use over 100 patents and a $5 million advance in prepayment for services.
It was smart to settle now and get some money than to wait it out in the courts while Vonage slowly goes out of business.
Why don't they just tape PC speakers and microphones to phones. I bet know one patented that yet.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Sprint sees the way the patent winds are blowing and wants to get while the gettin' is good.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Next up: Vonage vs Verizon in a net neutrality battle. With that pesky net neutrality out of the way, Verizon customers will receive high QOS. Vonage packets will get there. Eventually.
As with the RIM suit, there was simply no way this wasn't going to get settled. I realize that in the minds of Stallmanist teenagers companies go out of business to make quixotic statements about the eeeeevils of patents, but in the adult world, some money gets passed around and life goes on.
made as "Anonymous Coward."
You know it's going to happen. And then Sprint Nextel and the other carriers will be congratulating themselves at maintaining the hold they have on telecom. :(
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
No!
I thought these guys were on their way out.....Well at least less and less of their commercials are seen around, they were pretty annoying.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
How bad this is. The claims they used to make Vonage pay them are nebulous at best and could have been dreamed up by the average /.'er on a lazy afternoon.
The SIP protocol offers many novel ways to communicate. The least of which is a simple phone call. In one way, it is vonage's fault for choosing to stick to dumb phone call only because there were many neat possibilities awaiting consumers in SIP.
I fear for all of the smaller business voip/ISP outfits now that the first domino has fallen.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The news is out today and the stock is up 123%. But it is up about 260% since Thursday.. The volume on Friday was 4X normal.
Who were all those traders with inside information? And will anything be done about them? You so rarely hear about prosecutions for insider trading...
Date Open High Low Close Volume Adj Close*
today 1.56 2.70 1.41 2.57 34,993,632 2.57
5-Oct-07 1.05 1.23 1.02 1.15 4,172,700 1.15
4-Oct-07 1.00 1.05 0.98 1.03 2,463,000 1.03
3-Oct-07 1.00 1.01 0.97 1.01 1,053,700 1.01
2-Oct-07 0.99 1.03 0.96 0.98 1,662,100 0.98
1-Oct-07 1.03 1.03 0.96 0.96 1,295,600 0.96
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=VG&t=5d
Does anyone else doubt they could find 100 things worth patenting in this?
I don't think you understand what "ad hominem" means. It means "You're wrong because you're an idiot", not "you're an idiot because you're wrong".
Patent reform is something that I am a huge fan of and I have every hope that there will be some reformation shortly but I don't see any major changes happening until well after the elections. Too many company-owned politicians will likely prevent any real major changes to the patent system during the time when elections are gathering steam.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Can I sign up for Vonage and not fear it will be closed down in a week?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I wonder if there is any correlation?
OMZG, yuo know so many naughty words!!!!
The point is that the notion that big company X is going to go out of business over a patent dispute is absurd and that anyone who gets excited over that prospect doesn't know what he's talking about. Will customers have to pay a few dollars more for a few years until the patents run out? Sure.
As for "ad hominem", your link (OMZG, yuo know how to link to Wikipedia!!!!) entirely supports my point.
Many times your cell is useless in the home. At least one other cell company has already fielded a product where when you put the phone on the cradle, all extensions go through that cell. Next could instead be a system where when you put the cell down on the dock, the extensions go through it AND the calls then go from the cell to the IP-based system to save you battery use on the wireless transmissions, or if the base had a stand-by charger in it as well, at least offload their cell systems from calls taking place at home.
Then, I get to use my Sprint phone over Vonage at home, and over Sprint cellular when I take it with me. Put multiple docks in and have them have a nice little menu system to choose the phone to go through (in case three family members are home and have docked their phones). I can call out through my wife's if mine is already being used by something else dialing out.
Vonage could be a foot in the door to VoIP linkage to Sprint's system. Might seem a longshot, but there's been longer shots before...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Dinner is on me tonight, folks. When VG dropped below a dollar and everybody thought it was gonna go completely under, i stayed the course.
/yes, I'm gloating.
And you wanna know what originally got me interested in this stock? Reading the article on slashdot about Vonage getting sued.
HAHA!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Except all the notable changes lately have been in the courts. Especially the Supreme Court, where the Justices have been dropping strong hints that they are willing to overturn a lot of the patent craziness that's been going on for the past 10 - 15 years or so.
They are a reseller of an existing service - access to the telephone network. They do not provide anything on their own. No service, no infrastructure, no protocol on an existing infrastructure. Instead they are using the infrastructure that exists because of the telephone carriers as a club to beat them to death. Interestingly enough, if Vonage ever really succeeds and Sprint or Verizon shuts their doors, Vonage loses.
An exact parallel to this would be delivering IP video to cable customers through their cable modem. You buy a little box which takes the video data stream and outputs a video signal. Then the cable customer could drop television service in favor of this new service. Except in order to get the video programming the provider is a cable subscriber. So the cable company would get to be both the network and the wholesaler of the programming. Since the programming would be almost free (1 cable subscriber bill) it should make tons of money, right?
If the above seems like a clever idea to you, I've got another one. Have a little cart from which you sell hamburgers. You can take the cart around to people on the street so they don't have to drive or walk as far. In order to get these hamburgers you just work out a bulk purchase plan from McDonalds and resell them from your little cart. The idea would be to get McDonalds to agree to a such a low price that you could make money on this.
How long do you think such buy-bulk-services-for-resale schemes can go on? Sooner or later if you treat your supplier as a competitor your supplier is either (a) going to shut down or (b) shut your service off. Either is death to the buy-in-bulk reseller.
Sure, you can say that the infrastructure (or the hamburgers) should be public and any retailer should be able to use this infrastructure to compete with each other. That's fine now that it exists. But in order to get that first hamburger (or telephone switch) it was necessary to make a risky investment. Governments are not in the business of making risky investments. They either invest in sure things or they line up someone else to get the privilege of making the investment. We wouldn't have the phone system we have today if it was up to the government in 1900 to build it. They would have waited until 1950 to do it and then where do you think the US would be?
I pay $17 a month to Vonage, after paying $55 a month for years to AT&T.
Vonage has saved me approximately $1400 in three years. If they have to raise my rates a few dollars to pay for this settlement, I welcome it just to keep them around.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Any business analyst reporter sitting in on the case could have seen what was coming down and put it out in some traders newsletter. I can't point at one, but bet that is what happened.
I guess the same thing. Because, besides locking their devices to them exclusively, they are using voip standards (sip), which besides proprietary startups like skype, is the same thing most voip providers are using.
So I assume they are all infringing? I'm amazed a standard like sip came to fruition without anyone noticing these patents looming. And come to think of it, how is skype making the leap to the pstn network without infringing?
The idea of giving yet more money to COMCAST, much less Verizon, for the same service makes me even more nauseous. So, a little less schadenfreude, please.