Judge bars Vonage from signing up new customers

A U.S. district court ruling prohibits Vonage from adding new customers due to a jury's finding that the VoIP provider infringed on Verizon's patents

A U.S. district court judge on Friday barred VoIP provider Vonage from signing up new customers after the company lost a patent infringement lawsuit to Verizon.

Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied Vonage's request to stay an injunction pending its appeal of a patent infringement ruling. On March 8, a federal jury found that Vonage infringed on three Verizon patents and must pay $58 million in damages plus royalties.

Verizon sued Vonage last June, alleging the VoIP provider had violated seven of its patents involving packet-based calling technology.

Hilton issued a permanent injunction against Vonage in late March but delayed its implementation while considering Vonage's request for a stay. Vonage has said it would appeal the injunction to a higher court if it failed with Hilton.

A Vonage spokeswoman said Friday that the company is still evaluating Hilton's ruling and that the company would release a statement later. A Verizon spokesman said that company also would release a statement later Friday.

"It just keeps getting worse and worse for them every week," said Will Stofega, research manager for VoIP services at IDC. "For the judge to rule they can't sign up new customers, that's the whole idea in terms of their strategy."

Vonage has said it has an alternative technology it can use that doesn't use the patents claimed by Verizon. "Now is the time to demonstrate they have it," Stofega said.

With no ability to grow, Vonage's future is in doubt, added Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst. "Vonage was the poster child for the new VoIP technology, but now everyone is a competitor, and their importance is limited," he said. "The big question is about the company's survival, not the VoIP technology."

Yes. What part of proprietary information or corporate assets don’t you understand. If I invent something and choose to patent it, it is my work at first inventing it and second securing my RIGHTS to my Intellectual Assets through the patent.

Article 1 Section 8 mandates (among other things) that Congress set up an intellectual property regime to promote the "progress of Science and the useful Arts..." Unfortunately, today's implementation of patent is horribly broken. Patents can be issued on broad areas of technology instead of specific implementations of an idea. Patents can be 'submarined' until someone else has invested heavily in an implementation, and then sprung by surprise. Doing engineering and science in the US like walking blindfolded through a roomful of rakes, which is why the engineering and science is mostly being done in Asia today.

And what about the actual originators of patentable ideas? When you take a high-tech job, one of the standard documents you sign is a handoff of your patent rights to your employer. If you're the engineer who comes up with a winning new idea, someone on Mahogany Row gets a new watchband for his Rolex while you lose your your job to someone cheaper in India.

If you want a good example of the unfair nature of life check out the inventor to what today is the modern supermarket scanner. An invention done by an engineer on his own time after his employer said that the technology was not feasible.

Another is the way the Bleu Ray (LED Laser) was invented. Both are interesting stories.

I almost forgot, there was the Masters candidate that worked for Bell Labs back in the 80’s. He got the laser switch speed up to a femto0nano second and thus made the biggest breakthrough in telecommunications. His work naturally was owned by Bell Labs. Just about every telecommunications research facility was working along this line. I don’t know if anyone patented the idea that everyone was working on, but I do know that Bell Labs holds the patent on the actual process. That patent is now worthless by virtue of the progress of the technology.

If your idea is patented, then anyone that makes use of your idea should have made a search of the Patent Records and found out that their idea is not unique nor is it the first thought. Then they in truth would owe you license fees.

I know that's how the law is set up, but does it make any sense? All it does is encourage people do document and patent things that are obvious but impractical in the hopes that they'll strike it rich.

Patents are supposed to be reserved for things that are sufficiently non-obvious that if the person who discovered them first hadn't done so, they'd have gone undiscovered for the term of the patent. That a person (or many people) could discover an idea independently should be considered prima facie evidence that it wasn't novel and non-obvious as patent law requires.

Back in the 1990's I toyed with trying to send audio chat over a 9600-baud modem. Couldn't get any results that didn't sound like garbage, but would have considered it pretty obvious that if the bandwidth were higher sending decent audio in a data stream would be straightforward.

Since the article doesn't give the number of the patent in question (why do these articles always leave out such relevant info!?) I can't see what is claimed and whether it is reasonable or not. Does anyone have the patent number in question?

When I first got Vonage, it appeared to drop calls on a regular basis. Some investigation showed that it wasn’t Vonage but my ISP that was the cause. My ISP is oversubscribed and each time my system went to renew my IP address there was a problem (IP addresses get renewed depending on you IPS every 3 to 24 hours. Mine was 3). The oversubscription was for the ISP’s domain name servers. I found a couple of public sources for DNS and manually put their IP addresses into my router so that I didn’t have to depend on the tired and congested ones available from the ISP. I haven’t had a dropout since. Finding the IP address of a publically availabe DNS can be a daunting task. I now use my employer’s DNS and the DNS of a local university. Both systems are undersubscribed and idle most of the time.

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