Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - May 3, 2007

May 3, 2007

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to today's edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest.

Today in the news we will come to know how Vonage welcomes the Supreme Court's ruling of the patent case and then would go to the forum where a member needs some information related to call transfer to cell phone. As usual we will conclude with the Vonage stock price update.

In The News

Vonage Welcomes Supreme Court Ruling, Seeks Retrial in Patent Case

The US Supreme Court's ruling in the Teleflex Inc., versus KSR International patent case has turned the tides in Vonage's favor. As reported by Peter Kaplan of the Reuters, Washington, the justices had unanimously asked the courts to be more flexible while interpreting the standard governing, whether a patent is valid or is merely "obvious" combinations of previous inventions. In its opinion the Court said, "Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress and may, for patents combining previously known elements, deprive prior inventions of their value or utility."

According to Roy Mark of the InternetNews, Vonage late on Tuesday has sought for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to vacate a lower court decision that it had infringed on patents held by Verizon. If agreed by the Court the controversial case would go back to the lower court for a new trial based on a new "obviousness" standard set by the Supreme Court in its KSR v. Teleflex decision delivered Monday. As per the ruling the Supreme Court justices are of the opinion that an invention doesn't qualify for a patent if it is "obvious" to those with knowledge of the skills involved. Obviousness in the most common ground for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to reject a patent, reports Peter Kaplan.

As reported by Reuters, Vonage has said that, after the Supreme Court's decision on April 30, the lower court should be instructed to review the case considering the ruling that called for "a more expansive and flexible approach that allows for consideration of common sense when assessing whether an invention is ordinary or obvious, and thus ineligible for patent protection."

Jeffrey Citron, Chairman and Interim CEO of Vonage Holding Inc., said that the Supreme Court's decision should have positive implications for the company in its pending patent litigation with Verizon. Citron said in a statement, "We are very encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision and the giant step it represents towards achieving much-needed patent reform in this country."

According to Roy Mark, Vonage has complained the lower court decision was based on a very narrow interpretation of the obviousness of Verizon's patents.

"Vonage is confident this ruling should have a positive impact on its case," the company said in a statement.

In The Vonage VoIP Forum

Mohawk began a new thread titled, "Call transferred to cell phone." He put forward his query as; "I go out of town often and miss all my calls as I am away. I need to find a way to transfer all calls coming into my Vonage phone to my cell phone, so that I can talk to the people who call me. Can this be accomplished? Please let me know."

Tmbeem at this replied, "This can be done one of two ways, both of which accomplished by logging in to your Vonage account at http://www.vonage.com

Once logged in click on 'Features' which is the 7th link at the top of the page. On the left side of that page you'll see 'Call Forwarding'. Make sure the number you want to forward is selected, then click 'Configure'. Here is where the two options are. One is 'Basic Call Forwarding', where your Vonage line is forwarded to any number you want. The other is 'SimulRing' where you can put up to five numbers you want to ring IN ADDITION to your Vonage line."

He adds saying, "If you want to just forward your Vonage line to another number, like your cell phone, click on the 'Basic Call Forwarding' tab, select how many seconds you want your Vonage line to ring BEFORE the call gets transferred to another number, and then put the number you want your calls transferred to in the 'Before Forwarding To' box. Click 'Enable', and you should see a message that the settings are in effect. However, if you want your Vonage line to ring IN ADDITION to up to 5 other numbers, so that you can answer the call no matter what phone you're closest to, click on the 'SimulRing' tab, input the number(s) you want to SimulRing to, and click 'Enable'. There is also a 'Call Forwarding FAQ' you can refer to, and alternatively print out, if you need to save the directions for future use. I hope this helps! Welcome to the Vonage Forum!"

He continues saying, "EDIT: I just remembered there is an easier way to enable, and disable call forwarding using your telephone. It's been recently discussed at: http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic19196.html Just dial *72, and the voice prompt will instruct you to dial the number you want to forward to, read back the number, then it will tell you to press '1' to enable, then tell you it's enabled. To disable it, dial *73."

Mohawk thanked Tmbeem replying, "If I select the basic forwarding option and I do not answer, then will the calls go to my cell phone voicemail or my Vonage phone mail? i want the calls to go to my Vonage voicemail. Please let me know."

Xnewuser, a Vonage Forum Senior tried to give some provide by saying, "Check the timing before your cell phones voice mail picks up and set your Vonage voice mail answer time to something less. I set my Vonage voice mail answer time to 25 seconds, which worked great when my cell phone was on and in range. If it was off, or I was out of range, the cell phone voice mail would pick up almost immediately. My solution was to have my service provider disable my cell phone voice mail."

Mohawk at this writes, "Is there any other solution besides disabling cell phone voicemail? Please advise."

Galion a Vonage Forum Master says, "Unfortunately the cell provider doesn't really detect and make decisions based on who the call came from. Once you turn your cell phone off then all the cell phone provider knows is that you are not on the network and must route the call to voicemail. I don't know of a way another service (Vonage in this case) would know automatically that you were not available before you turned your cell off or went out of an area."

He adds, "If you were near a computer and you knew you were going out of cell range you could turn off forwarding so all your Vonage calls went to voicemail. But I cannot imagine that either being convenient or practical. I think you may have to either settle for two voicemail systems or make your cell phone the primary voicemail for both systems. Maybe, in the future, as telecommunications technology advances someone will run across your request and come up with a common communications protocol. Then systems could communicate status and we could have incredible features."

Hopefully the next post by Mohawk will prove that he has been benefited by the solutions provided on the forum.

Vonage Stock Report

On Wednesday, at the New York Stock Exchange, Vonage stock closed at $3.25 a share, which is a rise of 0.11 cents (3.50%) from that of Tuesday's closing price $3.14 per share. The lowest price of the day was $3.17 a share and the total number of Vonage shares traded was 1,499,688.

Once again our Vonage Forum can be reached through vonage-forum.com/forum15.html">this link.

That's what's hot about Vonage today. Check with us tomorrow for our next edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest.