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Sprint Wins $140M Verdict Against Time Warner Cable For Infringing VoIP Patents (arstechnica.com)
Sprint "may have just scored its biggest payout yet," reports Ars Technica, pointing out that Sprint's been filing lawsuits over its VoIP patents for more than a decade. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
On Friday, a jury in Sprint's home district of Kansas City said that Time Warner Cable, now part of Charter Communications, must pay $139.8 million for infringing several patents related to VoIP technology. The jury found that TWC's infringement was willful, which means that the judge could increase the damage award up to three times its value... Sprint filed the lawsuits that led to Friday's verdict in 2011, when it sued TWC along with Comcast, Cox, and Cable One, saying the competing companies violated 12 different Sprint business VoIP patents.
The article points out that Comcast's response was to immediately file a countersuit, which so far has resulted in an early $7.5 million verdict in their favor.
The article points out that Comcast's response was to immediately file a countersuit, which so far has resulted in an early $7.5 million verdict in their favor.
In each story, nobody list the patent number as if the patent itself doesn't matter. That's pretty telling here.
Digging, a typical example is 6633561
https://www.google.com/patents/US6633561
The invention here seems to be sending the control and data down the same connection, but that's not new in 2001. The bulk of the claims simply describe how VOIP works. Have I missed something here? There does not appear to be an invention.
The '52 patent is 6,463,052? Again no invention.