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

Patents are Evil

[pnewhook]

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.

Re:Patents are Evil

[cybereal]

In the narrow view of this scenario you seem to have a point. But in the grand view of all invention you have completely lost your footing. If a simple swap of patent ownership was made, you'd be happy to see Vonage protected by these old patents that they supposedly infringe.

The real problem is the requirement to maintain a patent. Companies seem to require no active use and no context definition for a given patent. I think reform would solve the problem, if it could include certain division of patenting, such as, into particular markets for requiring patent claims to specify rather detailed scenarios of use. Then in 10 years, if some new company comes along and uses the same technology for entirely different purposes, or in a different market, then the patent wouldn't apply to them.

Furthermore, if a company is awarded in any way shape or form a kind of monopoly (such as cable companies or telephone companies awarded "natural" monopolies due to the practical realities of running cables and pipes) then they should forfeit any and all patent rights until said monopoly is relinquished. Perhaps there could be some context rules for that as well. Say, if AT&T has any natural monopolies to provided internet access then any patents used for the purpose of doing business over the internet should be forfeit in return for the huge gift of that monopoly.

These or other ideas come and go. It's too bad nobody really cares besides the minorities that actually understand and see the impact. The masses, the ones who actually vote, never hear of this and thusly, don't care. Because the voters don't care, the politicians don't bother to address it for their resumé a.k.a. platform, because it's simply bad marketing. Even if it was a great and intelligent move, too many potential voters would see it as not in their interests and not vote. This is why politicians do such strange things. They are motivated to keep their jobs. Wouldn't you be?

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.

lol

[spykemail]

If you can't compete with a superior business model your best bet is to sue it.

Re:Patent #

[BrianWCarver]

6,487,200 The full Complaint (pdf)