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.'"

Comments

surprisationingness

[sh3l1]

I'd be really surprised if they survive this one.

Patent #

[DustyShadow]

Anyone know the # of the patent?

Re:Patent #

[PhotoGuy]

The patent (upon a very brief read by unprofessional eyes) seems to broadly be about packet-based voice over IP (well, isn't that all Voice of IP?)

So AT&T completely owns VOIP? That seems pretty damn broad to me, or am I missing that the patent is somehow more narrow than that?

skunks

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn telcos took public infrastructure bought and paid for and built up over years and did diddly squat with it other than running it as a cash cow, and now for some magical reason they get to own all those pipes. Why is this?? Those pipes rightfully should be public infrastructure like the roads. I *clearly* remember before the big breakup having the rented hard wired phone, and lining up as a kid to talk to grandma with all the siblings for 30 seconds apiece because it cost so much for long distance. Comes along some companies like vonage who prove it can be done much cheaper and more efficiently, and they get sued.

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.

They're back against the wall

[mind21_98]

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.

Collusion?

[the_greywolf]

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!

Re:can't beat em, sue em!

[Z00L00K]

In the end it seems likely that the alleged patent violations are harming the economy and development in a country in decline. The whole system seems corrupt and there are fights over the remains.

The US dollar has fallen to almost half it's value compared to the Swedish Krona in a few years. It's falling compared to other economies too.

To cut the losses, both economical and trust-wise it's time for a complete rebuild of the legal system regarding property rights and estimation of value loss. Suing people for ridiculous amounts of money won't help either. Software patents should be declared invalid - retroactively so that all court rulings regarding software patent breaks can be invalidated.

And the practice of being able to pick patent fees from the users of a technology that has a certain patent is completely hopeless. If anybody should be held responsible it's the manufacturer - not the user. If the manufacturer is in a foreign country - use the customs office to take care of the problem for all future cases.

Especially software patents are bad - because they often are applied to a certain detail, and the patents should have been dismissed as obvious. The effort to write code may be great for one programmer but made on the fly by another without even realizing that the first programmer has gotten a patent for the solution. Who is to blame? Who is responsible? Is it really "protection of assets" going on or is it just a spanner in the works of development and ultimately decreases the ability of the country to compete on the international market?

What most rulings in cases regarding software patents fails to take into account is that software is a volatile international thing - almost like the air we breathe or the water we drink - and it has no boundaries. (unless you build a really great firewall or resort to computers only able to run a nationally assigned OS and programming language). Each case where a patent software is granted is another nail in the coffin for development.

The use of patents forces you to look back all the time to make sure nobody infringes on your patent or tries to make it invalid. The current economic lifespan of a patent should be reduced to 3 to 4 years after which it only causes harm. If less effort is put into patents and more into development you will see a lot of more development done.

Not really anything new

[Secrity]

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.

Re:Patents are Evil

[ScrewMaster]

They are motivated to keep their jobs. Wouldn't you be?

Well, the way the system was originally set up, they weren't supposed to be concerned about that. The idea was that individuals (from all walks of life) would serve a term in Congress, go back to whatever it was they did prior to that, and then live under the laws they made. It was a natural negative feedback loop, and it was brilliant: chalk up another one for the Founders. Then the idea of a "career politician" or a "professional politician" came into play, and now we see these bastards subverting the law and doing everything they can to get re-elected. There's one, and only one way to solve that particular governmental problem: term limits. Congress did it for the office of President, now it's time they do it for themselves.

Don't see that happening in the near future though. They're too motivated to keep their jobs and that's the problem.