Verizon Patent Lawsuit

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 23, 2007 Posts: 8

jcovert wrote:

The judge said simply providing monetary damages "does not prevent continued erosion of the client base of the plaintiff."

Nothing will prevent continued erosion of the client base of the plaintiff. Twisted Evil

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 6

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I am very concerned about the outcome about this, despite all the Vonage happy talk.

Voip is the telephone oligopoly's "200 mpg carburetor" (it was rumored many years ago that the oil companies bought the patent to a super-economical carb to prevent the collapse of their industry).

If they do in Voip via legal means - if the patents Verizon asserts are upheld, we'll all be back to copper. Thus, there is no reason to jump ship yet, unless we head back to the Bell's.

My cable company sent me an offer that if I switch to their Voip, they'll upgrade my broadband from 5mbs to 10. Quite a seduction for an internet geek. But I really don't want to leave Vonage - yet. I'm in wait & see for now.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 20

It is just too bad, I really like Version, they are a good cell phone company. I hate that they are forcing Vonage to the point of going out of business.

Given the two, I'd rather have Vonage, cell phone companies are a dime a dozen...

Lets hope that things work out. I want my Vonage.!

Posts: 153 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 11, 2007 Posts: 153

holocron wrote:

I don't have a current link, but I read an article how the cable companies were coordinating interconnecting their own services, so they don't have to connect to the PSTN networks.

What good will that do, when you can only call other cable company customers, and not grandma with her legacy phone or your doctor at his office or your son's school or the local grocery store.

Voip, no matter the provider, is dead unless these patents are found to be invalid, which I predict will happen.

----

It's great that Mr. Connor is trying to get us to discuss things all in one topic. Folks who haven't read all the now-locked topics should really read the notes in one of them, beginning right here: http://www.vonage-forum.com/sutra105260.html -- special thanks to "Bleep" for getting us not just the patent numbers but the specific claims the jury found to have been infringed upon.

Posts: 41 · Full Forum Member Joined: Apr 07, 2006 Posts: 41

LuisPR wrote:

PRMan wrote:

Dish Network LOST to TiVo and an injunction was sought. That was probably a year ago.

Nobody has lost their Dish DVR yet. These things take time.

Same thing with Blackberry two years ago, and mine still works.

RIM settled with NTP just over a year ago for approx..$450 million. Also, a technical "workaround" is a joke seeing what Vonage's "engineer's" haven't been able to do feature-wise for their customers.

From the Wash Post article:
"...predicted that Vonage would find it difficult to design an alternative way of hooking its network to the public telephone system because of the way the judge had interpreted Verizon's patent, leaving the Internet challenger little legal room for maneuver. Vonage had unsuccessfully argued that the patent covered only a small portion of how that connection can be made.

"If Vonage tries to implement a work-around, it's entirely likely Verizon will come right back and say that work-around violates our intellectual property and they'll be right back in front of a judge," she said.

Posts: 153 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 11, 2007 Posts: 153

It's that broad interpretation of Verizon's patent that may just be Vonage's (and the rest of the Voip industry's) way out.

If, as the Wash Post article says, (and as I, also, interpret the patent) "Vonage would find it difficult to design an alternative way of hooking its network to the [PSTN]" then that's true of all Voip. The entire Voip industry would have to shut down, and the ENUM internet standard as defined in RFC 3761 ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3761.txt ) is also dead.

But worldwide, the Voip industry, in fact the whole telephone industry, is designing the future of telephony with the ENUM standard. Verizon will not be allowed to "pwn" the whole world. The patent will not hold up. It might hold up for a while in the U.S. with our screwed up patent system, but in the rest of the world, it will be laughed at.

The other patent infringement here (if the patent is valid) covers any use of any Voip telephony device (no matter the provider) from any WiFi Hotspot. That's just crazy for a patent like that to be allowed to stand.

Posts: 73 · Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 8:55 pm Post subject:

jcovert wrote:

Verizon will not be allowed to "pwn" the whole world. The patent will not hold up.

I can hear it now...

Verizon's new moto: "All your telephony are belong to us!"

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

holocron wrote:

jcovert wrote:

Verizon will not be allowed to "pwn" the whole world. The patent will not hold up.

I can hear it now...

Verizon's new moto: "All your telephony are belong to us!"

You know, they might not be trying to "pwn" the world. They may not even want any piece of Vonage. They might also know that in the end, their lawsuit is crap, and will eventually be thrown out/overturned/etc. But maybe their intention, in the short term, was to do enough damage to Vonage's stock price, by scaring investors. Maybe they have a one-two punch planned with Sprint later in the year. I'd say the desired effect on the stock price by Verizon seems to be sending investors scattering. The stock price can't take much more battering to send it less than $1.

In the end, maybe they just wanted to poke with a knife, aka 1000 papercuts, instead of chopping Vonage's head off with an axe. Trading on Monday will be interesting.

Posts: 292 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Oct 08, 2004 Posts: 292

navydavy2001: Nice insight. Smile

I can not believe that this has not been mentioned:

With Vonages' stock being totally tanked and with this lawsuit and Vonages' promise that no one will loose service (a bold statement for a public company, you can go to jail for false comments); the only way out is for Verizon to buy out Vonage, at a bargin price.

Mark my words: In 90-120 days all Vonage customers will become Verizon customers, minus you that jump ship, ahh, like most all.

Posts: 113 · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 3:30 am Post subject: at this point............

Frankly at this point all I care about is keeping my phone number, service, and at the same price. We will see what is going to happen.