Slashdot Mirror
Vonage Goes To Court III - The AT&T Suit
kickabear writes "AT&T has filed a lawsuit against Vonage, claiming patent infringement. This is the third major lawsuit to have been brought against Vonage by a major phone company. Vonage lost the previous two lawsuits, brought by Sprint-Nextel and Verizon. How much more money can Vonage afford to give away? How can Vonage educate a jury on prior art? 'It said in a filing to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that AT&T is seeking injunctive relief, compensatory and treble damages and attorneys' fees in unspecified amounts. Vonage said the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin on October 17.'"
I'd be really surprised if they survive this one.
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
Anyone know the # of the patent?
and people think RIAA are evil cocksuckers, teleco company's leave them for dead.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Revenge?
And here is the code: -
If (court_fines > available_cash) then
# increase fees paid by customers
(monthly_subscription_fee = monthly_subscription_fee * 1.25)
end
Some code would of course be responsible to check whether customers are beginning to jump ship after say a month.
Guys, they will survive this one.
The funny thing about the "prior art" claim in the summary is if you go and read it? It actually supports the patents in question. Maybe the OP needs the education? Not the jury.
TFAs are depressing and polarizing, but they're not news -- they're business as usual in the U$A.
Can't we get less depressing news for the weekend?
*Reaches for the Prozac*
If Congress gets its act together and refuses to grant the telcoms immunity for helping to illegally wiretap U.S. citizens, it's going to be AT&T's turn in the barrel. Hope they brought lots of Vaseline.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
As a Vonage Customer, I will continue to use their superior service, even if the price does have to increase.
Stories like this are really starting to annoy me. So may times we hear that a company that is just doing good businees gets sued into obivion for no real good reason.
As I'm going through patent hell myself right now, I've come to the conclusion that patents solely exist to stifle and restrict innovation. They no longer protect the inventor in any way. The only people getting rich off of patents are the lawyers.
Patents have outlived their usefullness and the entire system should be scrapped.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Damages from patent infringement - $35
Attorney Fees - $550 million
The lawyers win again...
We need the People's ubiquitous wireless mesh network, something we can use for voice and data and just "route around" the current information bottlenecks, which are the big telcos with the entrenched monopoly mindset and WAY too much power in the legislative process. Now watch these assholes gobble up more of the so called publics airwaves in the next spectrum auction, so they can lock in more control and profits. Screw it, they should be disallowed from even bidding, it should just be mandated it is for the creation of the universal wireless network, something needing not much at all in the way of plutocratic middlemen companies and their precious stolen infrastructure.
Vonage has had two chances to frame a defense that would be persuasive to a judge and jury - and failed in both. The reasonable conclusion is that it doesn't have a defense.
Yep, the telcos are trying to kill them. They're just going to keep finding stuff till Vonage dies. Then the telcos can increase their prices since they end up being the only game in town. Simple as that.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
lack of net neutrality will kill them if the lawsuits don't. they're doomed regardless.
If you can't compete with a superior business model your best bet is to sue it.
Haiku for you!
"Stories like this are really starting to annoy me. So may times we hear that a company that is just doing good businees gets sued into obivion for no real good reason."
Robert W. Kearns agrees with you.
Uh, huh. Lets see.
Vonage providing phone service---->Broadband connection owned by a monopoly----->customer, ???, profit!
Phone company monopoly providing phone service---->customer, ???, profit!
God in heaven what is this about? I have been a very happy Vonage customer from 2005. Where are the super lawyers to help save Vonage with this? Vonage is beyond the underdog here. Sorry - no trolling here - just emotion.
If it is any indication, I remember laughing at a judge who presided over a case of copyright infringement. After the trial the judge, and many in the jury, said in an interview they had difficulty understanding terms like website, and browser.
The things Verizon and Sprint have patents on, AT&T has patents on. All big telcos have thousands of patents covering every aspect of the telephone industry. And now with the loss in the Verizon case and a settlement in the Sprint case, it's clear that Vonage is incapable of defending their business model. It's time (and perhaps past time) for anyone with a patent claim to get in on the game.
Vonage is no longer a viable company. They are just a lump of cash, hemorrhaging out to anyone who looks at them crossly. Right now the game is for the tens/hundreds of millions of dollars Vonage has in cash. But that's just the appetizer; the real prize is the millions of Vonage customers who can be converted over to a "Triple Play" package.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I didn't realize until now how much AT&T and Verizon are in bed. Google saw this when the 700mhz spectrum went up for auction. The government is supposed to regulate monopolies, but monopolies seem to be doing the regulation of the government.
God spoke to me.
cross patents.
So say Vonage goes belly up in a few months... does anyone know of similair VOIP solutions? There's no way I'm going back to a telco land line.
Do a search on the web you will come across thousands of complaints about the tactics they use to stick it to the customer. Refusal to cancel customer accounts, charging for services never provided, technical difficulties they insist are not there fault...etc. The list goes on and on. Check the BBB site. The BBB booted them for so many customer complaints not resolved. Some states have even brought class action lawsuits against Vonage for such underhanded tactics they employ.
It can't be soon enough when they are finally buried.
These suits, combined with the poor performing stock after the IPO, have done a lot of damage to something great.
I had vonage, and it was the greatest thing in the world. The price was amazing, it worked really well, and it had amazing features. I loved that you got your messages emailed to you as wav files. I loved that you could do everything through the web site -- configure call forwarding, or whatever. You could buy an 800 number, or a virtual number online, and get rid of them online if you wanted to. You could carry your voip router with you, and plug it in another place if you wanted to take your phone with you.
And it was really cheap. $14.95.
All of that's still true, in fact.
The problem is that if something goes wrong, they don't do a good job of fixing it. My line worked perfectly for a long time, and then it went wonky on me. I have a friend who had been plagued with problems, and he made endless calls to tech support -- he'd wait in a long support queue, and then be told to cycle the power on the router. And they never fixed stuff.
So when my line developed a problem, I made one attempt to deal with support, and when that didn't clear things up, I left. I decided not to fight it, and just let them go. I didn't want to spend a couple of months fighting with them to fix a phone line upon which I depended. And I didn't have enough minutes on my cell plan to wait through the support queues over and over again.
I have to believe that when a company has so many obstacles, a lot of good people will leave. And I have to think that when money gets short, the support and tech sides get cut back. I mean, I think that without these suits, my service wouldn't have gone bad, and if it did, they would have fixed it. I totally blame the lawsuits for ruining a service that I loved.
Vonage was the only phone company I ever had that never felt like a rip off. They were so cheap, and it was such a great service. It was a pleasure to pay that bill each month.
I really wish things had worked out differently.
I've read the various comments. Yes the patent system is screwed. Yes it needs reforming. Yes the people that work at the USPTO are dumb as lead and wouldn't know a neutron from an atom.
However, I am sick of people in this forum crying about getting rid of patents.
When companies or individuals have worked on technology for 5-10 years to bring it to market readiness and spent ridiculous amounts of money on marketing the idea to the masses, its nice to know that your hard work is protected from the chinks who don't give a shite about patents and infringement or from those corporations that have tons of money and think they can just steamroll your innovation because you can't afford to fuckin sue them.
A good and fair patent system is needed.
Vonage doesn't really have a long term business model.
Once everyone is on IP no VOIP to old phone network gateway is needed and a phone will be something you buy at the local drugstore for $20 and then plug into your home network.
No service needed other than your normal internet service and no per month fee for phone.
PS: It doesn't take everyone, just enough so that the gateway charges are charged to the old phone system callers rather than to the VOIP side.
You assume that they have not been paid off to make sure they don't have a defense.
Right. Because every time a court decision doesn't go the way we like, it must mean someone was bribed. I see the logic.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Because it does.
Ridicule us.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Can't Vonage sue Verizon, Sprint and AT&T for collusion and conspiracy under the RICO act or some other suitable anti-competition law?
Surely there's proof!
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
I will be happy to see Vonage go under solely because their commercials make me want to kill myself.
Why can't we use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Voice_Protocol ? as prior art?
P.U. WMN doesn't seem like the best acronym to get the ladies on board, but then again, judging by my own romantic life, ladies aren't going to dig us no matter how cool our acronyms are...
Me: How's about me you go to someplace private, where we can get a little PVP action going, if you know what I'm saying...
Her: Oh, yeah, baby. That sounds really- (grabs mace from her purse and hits me with a liberal dose)...
Me: Ow! Ow! Fuck that burns! But -ow!- that's still pretty -ow!- hot how -fuck!- self-reliant you are... did I mention I have a 3.0+ mbps connection?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
They got their internet deregulation, so they can censor whatever content they want. They're going to get their retroactive immunity from breaking the FISA laws. And now they're going to shut down their competitors. At least they weren't able to buy off Senator Dodd.
These sorts of patent lawsuits are nothing new. Henry Ford was just about sued into oblivion because of the Seldon patent and Western Union tried to sue Alex Bell into oblivion (retro-irony). RCA owned patents on radio and totally controlled production of radios in the US. RCA and AT&T both have a long tradition of filing lawsuits to drive out competition. AT&T and RCA were part of a very small group of companies that cross licensed their vacuum tube patents and drove startups out of business.
I used to pay $50 for a basic phone line. I thought it was crazy. Then I got DSL and I had to have the phone line for the DSL, but I never used it. I only used my cell phone. Then I moved to a city where Cable Internet was way better then DSL so I never got a land line and never missed it. Now I am married and the wife "likes" the regular phone over a cell phone, we ended up getting Vonage at $15/mo. That is doable for me. I never use it, It just rings and I say... its not for me, anyone I know knows mt cell phone. Do love the voicemail and the right price. $50 a month is just crazy. I expect the "land line" will go the way of the dial-up modem. Ha no long distance charges on Vonage just like the cell phone.
Prior art should be an affirmative defense against patent infringement.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I posted on this the other day, but it will bear repeating.
Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his telephone at the Centennial Exhibition - our first World's Fair - in 1876. The year Custer died at The Little Big Horn.
AT&T was incorporated in 1877 and privately financed from day one. The first Bell telephone exchange opened in 1878. The Bell system was offering long-distance services before the invention of the vacuum tube.
There have been rural co-op telcos in the states, some city-owned public utilities. But they are not significant in the evolution of the technology, they are not insignificant in terms of capital investment in infrastructure.
The privatization of infrastructure in the United States is a recurrent theme throughout our history.
There have been titanic political struggles over education, medicine, housing, agriculture, industrial development, roads, bridges, canals, railways, flood control, power generation, broadcasting - - -
True, but Vonage is a step in the right direction. Once you get people away from ancient phone technology they start to realize that they only need one connection to the world for all of their communication needs (video, audio, other data - it's all the same really). If only all these people read Slashdot :(.
Haiku for you!
I looked at Vonage and decided it's still not that great of a deal. I use CallCentric myself. Two cents a minute and you only pay for what you use. They support SIP as well. The best part is, if you want to cancel, you don't have to talk to a customer retention specialist to do it.
After Verizon sued Vonage for patent infringement I thought maybe they infringed on their patent. Once Sprint and AT&T sued it is looking more likely there is patent pooling going on between at least three corporations. This is nothing new as the American Graphophone Company (Columbia) and the Victor Talking Machine Co. had pooled their patents on the lateral cut method of recording in an attempt to monopolize the market over 100 years ago. IF the courts had the mindset of today back in 1922, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals would not have held the Victor patent void for lack of invention and for abandonment and the entire music industry would be only owned by two businesses today.
I do hope I am wrong about the courts and they do eventually find in favor of Vonage.
I am waiting on my patents to come through...
Patent #1 = Providing a service and charging for that service...
Patent #2 = Sending in a description of a product or service to have a government organization provide protection to that idea...
Then I will sue everyone who owns or operates a business, and every individual or business that has ever filed a patent...
--E--